Road Out of Winter

Description:

Wylodine comes from a world of paranoia and poverty--her family grows marijuana illegally, and life has always been a battle. Now she's been left behind to tend the crop alone. Then spring doesn't return for the second year in a row, bringing unprecedented, extreme winter.

With grow lights stashed in her truck and a pouch of precious seeds, she begins a journey, determined to start over away from Appalachian Ohio. But the icy roads and strangers hidden in the hills are treacherous. After a harrowing encounter with a violent cult, Wil and her small group of exiles become a target for the cult's volatile leader. Because she has the most valuable skill in the climate chaos: she can make things grow.

Urgent and poignant, Road Out of Winter is a glimpse of an all-too-possible near future, with a chosen family forged in the face of dystopian collapse. With the gripping suspense of The Road and the lyricism of Station Eleven, Stine's vision is of a changing world where an unexpected hero searches for where hope might take root.

Brief description:

Alison Stine grew up in rural Ohio and now lives in Colorado. Her first novel, Road Out of Winter, won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. Her second novel, Trashlands, was long-listed for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, she has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.

Review Quotes:

"Stark, dark, and strangely urgent...A wild ride inside a future that feels all too real, with characters we care about, and a story we wish will never end."