Cold Victory -- Karl Marlantes, Hardcover

AN AMAZON TOP 10 BOOK OF THE MONTH

From New York Times bestselling author Karl Marlantes comes a propulsive and sweeping novel in which loyalty, friendship, and love are put to the ultimate test

Helsinki, 1947. Finland teeters between the Soviet Union and the West. Everyone is being watched. A wrong look or a wrong word could end in catastrophe. Natalya Bobrova, from Russia, and Louise Koski, from the United States, are young wives of their country's military attach駸. When they meet at an embassy party, their husbands, Arnie and Mikhail, both world-class skiers, drunkenly challenge each other to a friendly - but secret - cross-country wilderness race.

Louise is delighted, but Natalya is worried. Stalin and Beria's secret police rule with unforgiving brutality. If news of the race gets out and Mikhail loses, Natalya knows it would mean his death, her imprisonment, and the loss of her two children. Meanwhile, Louise, who is childless, uses the race as an opportunity to raise money for a local orphanage, na?e to the danger it will bring to Natalya and her family. Too late to stop Louise's scheme, a horrified Natalya watches as news of the race spreads across the globe as newspapers and politicians spin it as a symbolic battle: freedom versus communism. Desperate to undo her mistake, Louise must reach Arnie to tell him to throw the race and save Mikhail - but how? The two racers are in a world of their own, unreachable in Finland's arctic wilderness.

This is another masterful novel from the author of the modern classic Matterhorn, whose "breakneck writing style is both passionate and haunting" (W. E. B. Griffin). Layered with fast-paced action, historical detail, and a keen eye for the way totalitarianism and loss of truth and privacy threatens love and friendship, Cold Victory is a triumph.

Author: Karl Marlantes
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 01/09/2024
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780802161420

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 10/01/2023 pg. 8
Publishers Weekly 10/30/2023
Booklist 11/01/2023 pg. 33
Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2023
BookPage 01/01/2024

About the Author

Karl Marlantes graduated from Yale University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, before serving as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. He is the bestselling author of Matterhorn and What It Is Like to Go to War. He lives in rural Washington.