I'm catching up on my NetGalley books these past few months, and I think I appreciated this book now more than I would have on its release date. It's hard not to compare the pneumonic plague outbreak depicted in this book to the current COVID-19 pandemic, and it was interesting to see how it was dealt with back in the 1910s. The characters themselves felt a little flat, but I enjoyed this real-life story.

An excellent depiction of just how exhausting and terrifying battling against an unknown pestilence can be, but the characters were all pretty wooden and flat. Loved the setting, though - no idea there'd been an pneumonic plague outbreak in Manchuria in 1910, or that the Russians had enclave cities within Manchuria.

In all, great setting, meh characterization.

A great historical fiction read. I have never read anything on this topic before, the relationship between China, Russia, and Japan before WWI. I loved learning new things like Chinese calligraphy, tea rituals, and the various medical ideologies and practices during that time period. Neither the plot or the characters really pulled me into the story and it took me a long time to finish because I kept setting it down, but overall, I enjoyed the book.

The Winter Station byJody Shields once again reaffirms the role historical fiction plays in introducing me to history I don't know. I end up spending more time with the history than the story itself. The history is fascinating. The story as told in the book is compelling in the intensity of the situation but less interesting to read. Nothing much happens. The book is slow-paced and sometimes repetitive with an abrupt ending.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2018/05/the-winter-station.html

Reviewed for NetGalley

The Winter Station by Jody Shields is set in Harbin, Manchuria in 1910, during a time of plague. In the Russian section doctors are trying to stem the tide of deaths but are hindered by Russian politics and deceptions, as they try to keep the population from knowing there is plague. But even the doctors aren't sure what is causing the plague and how to handle it, and in the meantime dead bodies are showing up and disappearing and no one seems to know why.

The Baron is a doctor, an aristocrat, and the chief medical examiner. He's trying to find out who is leaving the bodies in the street, why are some disappearing and where are they going? Why are Russian soldiers involved? As chief medical examiner he should be examining the bodies, but he is stymied at every turn by Russian officials & bureaucrats and the Chinese are no better. As he works with his fellow doctors to manage the damage from the plague he is drawn into the politics and ignorance even of his fellow medical professionals. As he tries to protect his friends and families from the ravages of the plague and t keep people alive it seems that he is thwarted at every turn.

The Winter Station is based on a real incident in history that reveals the courage, faith, arrogance and ignorance among both Russian and Chinese officials during the course of a devastating plague. The writing is excellent, the characters, (especially that of the Baron) extremely well developed. You will feel the cold of the winter, the helplessness of the families and the doctors, and the brutal arrogance of officials...you will feel you are there! The Winter Shield is an interesting book about a little known even in history, and is worth a read!

Thank you Netgalley for an early reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

While I knew this book would be a challenge, I wasn’t aware of how much of one. I began the book and was immediately pulled in by a mysterious death scene but the book lost me after that. I got a third through before I just couldn’t read more. The biggest failing of this book is the plot couldn’t seem to settle on what the story was about. Was it a story of a doctor struggling to straddle the line of two worlds? Or was it book about racial unrest? Was it a book leading to the Revolution? Was it a history? As a reader, it felt a bit like being buffeted through a storm and was not at all enjoyable. I wish I could have finished it as there was some potential, but not enough to persuade me.

Ok book, wouldn't be a "keeper" for me. Being a Russophile, I couldn't wait to read this book, but was rather disappointed....

I made it through about 30% of this book before abandoning it. The book just never drew me in, it was all tell and no show. Nothing had happened by that point other than a lot of conversation and calligraphy. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This book is interesting. I did not know much about Kharbin (Harbin nowadays), or the Manchurian plague in the early 1900s, so it was valuable for that awareness. The discussions and arguments the doctors get into over how to approach the plague would make for an interesting discussion, and it causes the reader to ask how he or she would respond in the same situation. The characters are ones that I imagine most people would form an opinion about, so I think this would make for a good book club selection. However, the pace was very sluggish, which I feel will turn many people off. I kept checking to see how many pages it was, because it seemed to take forever to read. If a reader tends to go for slow-paced, descriptive and reflective reads, this might work for them. For me, editing and condensing might have made this a 5-star book. The entire calligraphy teacher portion didn't seem to go anywhere, and the rest felt like long meetings and extensive descriptions of actions which could have been consolidated.

This book is written very much in the style of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The story is at times very difficult to follow. Sheilds does not complete his thoughts within the story so the reader is left trying to piece together the plot line.

An interesting, but slow paced, journey through contrasting cultures, communities and religions.

This is absolutely wonderful and unique historical fiction. Set in 1910 Harbin, it tells the tale of the Baron, Chief Medical Examiner for the city, and his friends as they try to cope with an epidemic of plague. Who would have expected plague to be the basis of such an interesting story but Shields has done it by creating terrific characters. The Baron, his colleague Messonier, Andreev the smuggler, General Khorvat, Chang the dwarf- they are all realistic, sympathetic, and fascinating. The details of dealing with plague victims (and the corpses) are tough to read. Beware the scene at the well. Russian-Chinese relations (and to a lesser extent with Japan) are touched on primarily in terms of the prejudice and fear each feels for each other. On the positive side, though, you'll learn not only about tea but also how to drink it and about Chinese calligraphy (also loved the teacher.). There's a lot of depth to this novel which came as quite a good surprise. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This isn't for everyone as it's dark and occasionally difficult, but it's definitely worthwhile and one I highly recommend for fans of historical fiction.

“The Winter Station” by Jody Shields is indeed reminiscent of the Russian novels I remember reading in high school and college. Life is grim, the landscape stark and cold, the people quite unhappy.
In a good winter it would be depressing, but in the winter of 1910-1911, a plague struck the area of Kharbin, a city created by order of the czar, with four distinct districts created by the Russian occupation. Fuchiatien is the poverty stricken Chinese district; Gorod is home to the wealthy Russians; a commercial district; and the district housing the military. Kharbin does however, has one of the major railway depots in Manchuria.
The main character, Baron von Budberg, is the medical examiner in Kharbin and must tread lightly around General Khorvat in order to keep his job. His Chinese wife and his ability to speak Chinese and relate to the Chinese population are major assets for him.
The discovery of unreported dead when their bodies are found buried in snow causes panic and more secrecy. The book demonstrates a number of great divides - wealth and status, science and superstition; and Eastern and Western medicine.
This would be a great read for those interested in Russian history, for I feel it gives great insight to the life of the people of the area and of the plague itself. I’m afraid I found it to be quite slow and struggled somewhat to finish it. One aspect I found rather delightful was Baron seeking solace and relaxation from the horrible days in the hospitals during the plague in learning the art of caligraphy. It was beautiful described and lifted my frame of mind at the same time it did his.

Thank you to Little and Brown and Netgalley for allowing me to read this book in advance.

Kharbin, established in 1898, was built in the Manchurian wilderness by order of the czar. Kharbin was divided into four unequal districts by the Russian occupiers. General Dmitry Khorvat, the administrator, lived in Novy Gorod, the district housing rich Russians. Fuchiatien, a Chinese shantytown, was built on lowlands near the Sungari River. Baron von Budberg, hailing from St. Petersburg, was a Russian diplomat's son. He lived in Fuchiatien with his Manchu wife. Of the remaining two districts, one was the commercial district, the other billeted soldiers. Kharbin boasted a train station. Central Station was a major railway outpost in Northern China.

Baron no longer embraced St. Petersburg as his home. Arriving in Kharbin in 1904, he was appointed by General Khorvat as chief medical examiner. He could be terminated, at will, by Khorvat. He had to walk a fine line although his translation abilities and knowledge of Chinese increased his importance to General Khorvat.

The frigidly cold, snowy Manchurian winter of 1910-11 was a deadly one. Baron's Russian servant, Andreev, was a black marketeer. He could locate anything for a fee. Andreev overheard and informed Baron that two bodies were discovered frozen in the snow outside Kharbin's Central Station. Although Baron worked at the Russian Hospital two blocks from where the bodies were found, he was not consulted or asked to sign death certificates. No bodies were brought to the hospital. Since the deceased were Chinese, the deaths were not considered to be relevant. When Russian merchant Dmitry Vasilevich returned by train from Mukden and disembarked at Kharbin, his death was imminent. He was quickly buried. This was not the case with bodies left in the snow. Khorvat felt that the bodies would soon be forgotten. Baron, however, wanted to examine the dead bodies to determine cause of death. Bodies kept disappearing. Dr. Wu, director of Imperial Medical College arrived in Kharbin to provide assistance. Medical opinions and cultural differences collided. What was this illness and what did infected people have in common?

"The Winter Station" by Jody Shields is a work of historical fiction based upon the outbreak of plague during the 1910-11 Manchurian winter. Different factions did not share the same sanitary standards. Rumor and superstition prevailed as well. Author Shields depicts the clash of cultures and traditions creating roadblocks to discovery and treatment of the infected.

Thank you Little, Brown and Company and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "The Winter Station".

As it is portrayed in Jody Shields’ The Winter Station, Harbin, Manchuria is the ends of the earth. It is a frozen outpost in winter and the Chinese Eastern Railway is its lifeline to the rest of the world. In the winter of 1910-1911, the city was maintaining a rough balance between the Russians who brought the railroad and money into the city and the Chinese who provided all the hard labor. That balance is severely tested when pneumonic plague breaks out and causes one of the deadliest ever epidemics in recorded history.

Our guide to the plague-ridden city is the Baron, a Russian noble with a sinecure (he is unofficially exiled from Russia because he married a Chinese woman without the tsar’s permission). The Baron is an outsider to both the Russian and Chinese populations of Harbin. The Chinese don’t like him because is Russian. The Russians don’t like him because the Baron is doing his best to assimilate with the Chinese. We follow the Baron through the worsening outbreak and the panicked efforts of the city’s doctors in their futile attempts to treat patients, with frequent interludes in which our narrator foreigner-splains Chinese tea customs and calligraphy.

Over the course of The Winter Station, the Baron attempts to figure out how the plague came to the city and keep his family safe. Meanwhile, he is also our fly-on-the-wall during meetings with the medical team as they try to figure out how to treat a disease that was, until the development of antibiotics, nearly 100% fatal. It must have been terrifying for the actual medical team at the time. The only thing they could do was disinfect everything in sight, wear masks when working with patients, and inject patients with morphine to try and control their pain and coughing. Their already impossible task was made even more difficult by their inability to cut off travel into and out of the city.

There are other, better books that explore life in a city where people are dropping dead from a poorly understood disease. As I read The Winter Station and, I’ll admit, skimmed over the textbook-y sections about Chinese culture, I thought of Albert Camus’ The Plague. The Winter Station appears to be trying to capture The Plague’s atmosphere of hopelessness and paranoia. Unfortunately, it fails because it tries to do too many things at once: medical thriller à la The Hot Zone, guide to Chinese culture, and story of a man caught between cultures.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It will be released 30 January 2018.

A previous reviewer has provided a very detailed summary of the book, so I don't need to repeat it. The story takes place in a remote area of the East, where Russia, China and Japan are are struggling for control. It's 1910, before the discovery of antibiotics. People are mysteriously dying in the freezing northern winter and the bodies are just as mysteriously disappearing. The Baron, one of several doctors and the main character in the story, discovers that the deaths are due to the plague, a disease we today can hardly imagine, and the ensuing race to eliminate causes and carriers sweeps us along in the tale. We see what medicine was like in the era before penicillin transformed medical care, and we learn about the tight-knit community of Russian doctors in this outpost of civilization, the local Russian community's interactions with the Chinese residents, and how friendships and love can blossom in this difficult environment. It was an interesting and educational book, and I enjoyed it greatly.

The ending of this book makes the book such a terrible read that it’s not worth it. Not a bad story, but an atrocious ending.

The story just didn't work for me; it didn't hold my interest. I didn't finish it.

The Winter Station by Jody Shields was just the read I needed. I was experiencing a lack of motivation and knew it was time to pick up a book that would sweep me along into it's world.

Based on a "true story that has been lost to history," the atmospheric setting is beautifully detailed, the mystery revealed with a slow build up of suspense, the characters fully realized and sympathetic.

The story takes place in the winter of 1910 in a remote Manchurian city built as a train station and hub of the railroad that brings freight and passengers across Asia. Divided into quadrants, each with its own character and government, Chinese and Russian, with Japan champing at the bit to invade Manchuria, the city's peace is precarious.

The Baron has rejected the life of wealth and privilege to become a doctor. He embraces Manchuria, marrying a Manchu woman and learning the customs and language. He is more comfortable with smugglers and misfits than with his own class. He is open to new ideas, including modern medical practices such as hand-washing and the use of masks.

The Baron is a student of calligraphy, struggling to find the calm center which allows the brush to lead his hands. He enjoys the formality of the tea ceremony, boiling water poured over a hand turned, unglazed clay teapot to warm it, the rolled leaves set inside and steeped three times, each steeping of tea offering a new experience. His lovely young wife is his refuge, and he marvels at his happiness with her.

In the bitter snow of winter the dead appear, frozen and blood splattered. As the weeks go on, it is clear there is an epidemic of monstrous proportions. Dr. Wu, the Baron, and other doctors clash over methodology, and the Baron argues against the orders of secrecy and the disposal of the deceased. The Baron seeks a balanced path between East and West, the interests of state and business versus medical practice and wisdom, considering needs of the poor and rich and even the quick and the dead.

Scenes of unimaginable hell become commonplace, and every decision made could mean life or death. The historical plague took 40,000 to 60,000 lives over the winter of 1910-11.

Shields' novel brings alive a city and place that was totally new to me. I loved the descriptions of the tea ceremony and calligraphy lessons, although some readers may complain that these scenes impede the plot. I say, bosh, the scenes make the world come alive. My only disappointment was the open ending. I had invested a great deal in the lives of the characters and I was left stranded on the ice.


I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.