Road Out of Winter

by Alison Stine

Overview

2021 winner of the Philip K. Dick Award
A 2020 The Rumpus Book Club Selection

“Blends a rural thriller and speculative realism into what could be called dystopian noir…. Profoundly moving.”—Library Journal, starred review

In an endless winter, she carries seeds of hope

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. Both gripping and lyrical, Stine’s vision is of a changing world where an unexpected hero searches for where hope might take root.

“Richly imagined, deeply moving and unthinkably offers hope in a world that uncannily resembles ours…. Gloriously well-written.” —Ms. Magazine

And don't miss the next literary speculative novel from Alison Stine, TRASHLANDS, coming October 2021.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780778309925
Publisher:	MIRA Books
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	321,612
Product dimensions:	5.29(w) x 7.91(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

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. Recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Geographic, she has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and elsewhere.

Editorial Reviews

05/25/2020

Society collapses after two consecutive years of winter in this haunting dystopia from Stine (The Protectors). When Wil’s family leaves Appalachian Ohio for California, 20-something Wil is left behind to tend the family business of illegally growing and selling marijuana. But as the town’s residents realize there will be no spring this year once again, Wil receives a postcard from her mother with her new address. She sets out to meet her mother, accompanied by two young men she rescues, one who was lost in the woods and one who was caught in a mob of angry townsfolk. On their cross-country journey in a truck they encounter helpful environmentalists; a dangerous, totalitarian community that’s sprung up in a skate park; and a suicide cult. Wil’s farming skills and collection of vegetable seeds and grow lights may be her only chance of survival, but they also make her a target for those willing to kill for her resources. Stine’s prose is crisp and atmospheric (“The earth was so frozen it was like chipping at bone.... Snow quickly filled the holes I had made, as if even this small blackness was not allowed to stay in the new white world”), and though bleakness abounds, the ending strikes a lovely balance of hope and pathos. Fans of climate fiction and found family stories will be entranced. Agent: Eric Smith, P.S. Literary. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Alison Stine's Road Out of Winter

Winner of the 2021 Philip K Dick Award for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original

“Richly imagined, deeply moving and unthinkably offers hope in a world that uncannily resembles ours currently in the thick of COVID-19…. Gloriously well-written.” –Ms. Magazine

"With echoes of The Road and Winter’s Bone, Stine's latest is an excellent feminist dystopian novel of survival, desperation and, ultimately, hope.... Sublimely written and with much for book clubs to discuss, this book is highly recommended for all collections." —Booklist, starred review

“Blends a rural thriller and speculative realism into what could be called dystopian noir. The author’s vision is profoundly moving… Readers searching for a novel fueled by fierce intelligence and empathy will find here a celebration of humanity, and a warning against its loss.”—Library Journal, starred review

“Haunting… Stine’s prose is crisp and atmospheric, and though bleakness abounds, the ending strikes a lovely balance of hope and pathos. Fans of climate fiction and found family stories will be entranced.” —Publishers Weekly


“A closely observed, evocative portrayal of place in a time of extreme duress. A warning about who we become and who we want to be in an uncertain future. Beautifully written and essential.” —Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation

"Stark, dark and strangely urgent, this is a book that grabs you on the first page and doesn't let go. Alison Stine is a master at the craft. She takes us on a wild ride inside a future that feels all too real, with characters we care about, and a story that we start wishing will never end." —Rene Denfeld, bestselling author of The Child Finder and The Butterfly Girl


“Like The Road infused with feminist grit, Alison Stine's Road out of Winter focuses on the true seeds of hope during a climate apocalypse: the things that nurture both our bodies and our souls. A startling and intimate look at what happens when our planet turns against us.”—Mike Chen, author of A Beginning at the End


A 2020 The Rumpus Book Club Selection

From the Publisher

★ 07/01/2020

Stine (The Protectors) blends a rural thriller and speculative realism into what could be called dystopian noir. The author's vision is profoundly moving, as distressing as Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone but liable to inspire real-world action. Wil, who sells her parents' basement-grown weed with her power to make anything grow, while at the Crossroads gas station, yearns in their two-year absence to leave southeast Ohio's Appalachia and join them in California. The ever-cold and early dark signs of devastating climate change are freakish enough, but people lining up for bottled water, and hunting the woods for meat, has become the new normal. After encountering, and reluctantly taking in, woods-wandering Grayson, who has twisted his ankle, Wil hitches up her trailer home and trucks off. Her instincts to cover, hide, and keep secrets resonates with the broader environment of chaotic Internet identities and pervasive surveillance. Paranoia is dominant. Wil's chronic emotional state, fortunately, is self-control in a desolate journey peopled by violent cults, drifters, and elitist deviants confronted by a natural world most have lost the ability to comprehend, let alone survive. VERDICT Readers searching for a novel fueled by fierce intelligence and empathy will find here a celebration of humanity, and a warning against its loss.—William Grabowski, McMechen, WV

Library Journal