Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other … doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains.
But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon’s scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient, and nurse forever.
From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front; from hardscrabble operating rooms to battlefields thundering with Cossack cavalry, The Winter Soldier is the story of war and medicine, of family, of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and finally, of the mistakes we make, and the precious opportunities to atone.
“The Winter Soldier brims with improbable narrative pleasures…These pages crackle with excitement… A spectacular success.”-Anthony Marra, New York Times Book Review
“A dream of a novel… Part mystery, part war story, part romance.”-Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See
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Part mystery, part war story, part romance, The Winter Soldier is a dream of a novel — impeccably researched and totally immersive. The unsinkable Margarete is a mesmerizing character, and the book’s investigation into the psychiatric toll of war on its combatants could not be more timely. This novel convinces you with every sentence.
I have been a Daniel Mason fan since The Piano Tuner. His abilities as a storyteller and a writer of the most gorgeous prose leave you wanting more. The Winter Soldier is a tour de force. I was immersed in the grandeur of Imperial Vienna and the frozen battlefields of the Eastern Front, and in this beautiful tale of love and war, and of our frailty and resilience in the face of both.
Someone gave me this book. It engrossed me with its original story, its interesting characters, and its brutal take about a side of the Great War you don’t read much about.
I am thrilled that I stopped resisting The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason. I was leery of delving into another WWI novel, knowing the despair and suffering I would encounter. When I began reading I couldn’t stop and stayed up late to finish it.
The novel tells the story of Lucius Krzelewski of Vienna, an inexperienced young medical student who shows much promise but is frustrated by the limitations of medical school. When war breaks out, a friend convinces Lucius that he can get first-hand experience by enlisting as an army doctor.
Lucius is sent to a remote hospital on the Eastern Front. The doctors abandoned the hospital when typhus broke out. In charge is a nurse, a nun named Sister Margarete and under her tutelage, Lucius learns how to doctor and how to love.
Lucius knows his job is to patch the men up so they can be returned to the war. He wants to protect the men in his care whose wounds are unseen but who the army deems fit for service. One soldier particularly affects Lucius and Margarete, a beautiful artist who arrives in winter, so traumatized he cannot stop screaming.
The storyline and characters kept my interest but I also appreciated how I learned so much about the war on the Eastern Front, the level of medical practice and knowledge at the time, and the shifting political landscape of Eastern Europe.
I have read so many terrific WWI novels in the past few years. So much has changed in 100 years. And yet, so much remains the same.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
So real, so rich and detailed, that the room in which I was reading vanished. I was transported to a lost world of the past. Suspenseful, thrilling, aching with emotion. Living with Lucius and Margarete, it was the First World War as I have never felt it.
As an author and physician I tend to love reading books by writers who are also physicians especially when the work has a medical storyline. This book fits the criteria. Daniel Mason is a practicing psychiatrist who has written a story that begins with a protagonist who is a medical student in Vienna. Lucius is in his third year of studies when World War I breaks out. Due to a shortage of physicians, the call to adventure, and the desire to gain wartime surgical experience he volunteers for service in the Army thinking he will be sent to a military hospital to be trained by experienced doctors and surgeons. He winds up posted to a remote forward battalion aid station set up in a bombed out church in the Carpathian Mountains in the dead of winter–a literal hell on Earth. His salvation is an unusual nurse, sister Margarete, who brings order to his world and teaches him battlefield medicine. Their relationship develops into a touching romance. Lucius learns the finer points of battlefield surgery, i.e., amputation, the importance of sanitation and hygiene, and the psychological devastation caused by war. When the chaos of battle separates Lucius and Margarete he will do anything to find her. Mason is an exceptionally talented writer. His ability to craft sentences and scenes is superb. I love his writing and found the descriptions of medical and surgical scenes authentic, visceral and visual. This is a book for those who like literary fiction with a touching romance and wartime medical subject matter.
Lucius lives a privileged life in Vienna as WW1 breaks out, studying medicine to the disappointment of his industry-titan parents. Lucius enlists, is sent to an overwhelmed and under-equipped battle front medical station in the Carpathian Mountains, and his eagerness to take on complex cases gives way to fear of exposure as an incompetent novice. He is trained in the practical realities of war wound care by Sister Margarete, an unforgettable quirky character with an intellectual curiosity that lends itself to indispensable medical problem-solving at the remote outpost. Mr. Mason’s prose is an unusual mix of technical, cringe-worthy descriptions of wounds and rudimentary medical procedures, and poetic narrative descriptions that bring to mind All The Light We Cannot See. We are immersed in the eastern front: lice infestations, soldiers trading stamps during a respite from fighting, foraging for nuts and mushrooms to feed the wounded, and a perplexing wave of soldiers in debilitated mental condition without corresponding physical injury. Lucius becomes fixated on one such case, and his medical interest in shell shock goes horribly awry when the conscription detail appears, seeking patients who are fit to fight. As the fighting ends, Lucius can’t leave the front behind, suffering hallucinations and obsessing over the fate of Margarete, leading to an epic twist of fate.
Was this review helpful? I am an avid world war based fiction reader and author. You can read more of my takes at https://brodiecurtis.com/curtis-takes/.
Nice enough for a beach read, but silly.
This is a sleeper of a book, a haunting story of a young doctor Lucius–medical student, really–who finds himself on the front lines of World War I in northern Hungary. There he is coached, scolded, bolstered, and inspired by his nurse and assistant Margarite. When the winter soldier arrives, traumatized by the horrors of war, Lucius and Margarite try to save him. The two have different ideas entirely about what that means.
Slow start but stuck with it and was pleasantly surprised.
Half way through, started slow but Enjoying it. now . Looking forward to it everytime I put it down.
The story of a young Polish medical student thrust into the role of a M.A.S.H. surgeon doing “meatball surgery” on the Eastern Front during World War I and his romance with a young nun (who is a better doctor/surgeon than he is).
Well written, great prose. Emotionally depicts the atrocities of war, the horrific injuries, how disposable soldiers and people are, the terror of not knowing what happened to someone you loved. The journey plot goes on though, and the second half is slow.
Most novels about the First World War take place on the Western Front. Not so, The Winter Soldier. The setting for this beautifully written story is the Austrian-Hungarian Empire’s campaigns on the Eastern Front. Although some of the details are horrific, this novel is, at its heart, a love story. Highly recommended.