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All the Winters After: A Novel
All the Winters After: A Novel
All the Winters After: A Novel
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All the Winters After: A Novel

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Alaska doesn't forgive mistakes

That's what Kachemak Winkel's mother used to tell him. A lot of mistakes were made that awful day twenty years ago, when she died in a plane crash with Kache's father and brother--and Kache still feels responsible. He fled Alaska for good, but now his aunt Snag insists on his return. She admits she couldn't bring herself to check on his family's house in the woods--not even once since he's been gone.

Kache is sure the cabin has decayed into a pile of logs, but he finds smoke rising from the chimney and a mysterious Russian woman hiding from her own troubled past. Nadia has kept the house exactly the same--a haunting museum of life before the crash. And she's stayed there, afraid and utterly isolated, for ten years.

Set in the majestic, dangerous beauty of Alaska, All the Winters After is the story of two bound souls trying to free themselves, searching for family and forgiveness.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 16, 2016
ISBN9781511325943
All the Winters After: A Novel
Author

Seré Prince Halverson

Seré Prince Halverson is the international bestselling author of The Underside of Joy, which was published in eighteen languages. She and her husband have four grown children and live in Northern California in a house in the woods.

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Reviews for All the Winters After

Rating: 3.760869493478261 out of 5 stars
4/5

46 ratings12 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book was just not for me. I'm sure it will be fine for lovers if women's fiction. I abandoned it at the 38% point. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    To me, the main character in this book was Alaska. At certain points, I just wanted to pack up and move there. While I liked the story just fine, there were no surprises as to what was going to happen. You could see everything coming from a long way. Kache lost his parents and brother in a plane crash 20 years ago and has never recovered or returned home. HIs Aunt Eleanor (Aunt Snag) has never been able to check on the family's home like she promised him. His grandmother, who has had to go into a nursing home, doesn't have a lot of time left and Kache needs to get home. He's sure that the cabin has decayed into a pile of logs but when he drives out there, there is a fire burning and a young Russian woman is living there completely isolated for ten years. Again, this is a good book, just not great for me. However, again, the parts about Alaska were just perfect!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Such an exquisitely written book with its hauntingly beautiful prose and story line. It entwines stories of great loss, pain, fear and deep regrets. As the characters help one another free themselves from their inner demons, the healing begins. Light shines into the deepest recesses of their sorrows, angst and pain and the characters are all the better for it. But after the healing, difficult choices linger unspoken. In the freeing, one risks equally the possibility of losing. Eventually, for good or bad, choices must be made and life continues on. The book's cover art drew me into the first few pages and the painterly prose held me there. The wilds of Alaska are beautifully rendered and are just as I had previously imagined them to be. That same toughness of nature lies within each of the leading characters as well. Although love is a thread throughout this story: love of land, freedom, family and mother nature, it is romantic in the pure sense of the word and not a typical "romance novel". There is considerably more substance to the characters and greater depth of emotion. Well done, Ms. Halverson!I am grateful to Sourcebooks Landmark for having provided a free Advance Reader Copy of this book. Their generosity, however, did not influence this review, the words of which are mine alone.Synopsis (from book's back cover):Alaska doesn't forgive mistakesThat's what Kachemak Winkel's mother used to tell him. A lot of mistakes were made that awful day twenty years ago, when she died in a plane crash with Kache's father and brother--and Kache still feels responsible. He fled Alaska for good, but now his aunt Snag insists on his return. She admits she couldn't bring herself to check on his family's house in the woods--not even once since he's been gone.Kache is sure the cabin has decayed into a pile of logs, but he finds smoke rising from the chimney and a mysterious Russian woman hiding from her own troubled past. Nadia has kept the house exactly the same--a haunting museum of life before the crash. And she's stayed there, afraid and utterly isolated, for ten years.Set in the majestic, dangerous beauty of Alaska, All the Winters After is the story of two bound souls trying to free themselves, searching for family and forgiveness.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An exceptional character driven work, which quickly draws the reader in. An exceptional work of fiction.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an absorbing story full of emotional complexity about loss, loneliness, and love, which takes place over four seasons in Alaska. The seasons are reflected in the evolution of the characters, from the frozen winter to the awakening of spring. Kache Winkel, named for the place he was conceived (Kachemak Bay in Alaska), is 38, but his life has been on hold for the last 20 years, ever since the rest of his immediate family died in a plane crash and he blamed himself. He has been living in a self-imposed exile in Austin, Texas, but his grandmother Lettie can no longer travel, and he wants to see her.Back in Alaska, 28-year-old Nadia Oleska has been living in the Winkels' abandoned family homestead for the last ten years, also in a petrified [double entendre] state - never leaving, and carefully preserving the look of the house and memories of the Winkel family. When Kache returns, he finds out from his late father’s sister Aunt Snag, that she has not in fact been maintaining the old homestead all this time as she had averred. Rather, she too has been avoiding it from her own sense of guilt. Upon driving out to the house, Kache discovers Nadia there, and takes to this odd, brave woman. In an awkward reverse that puts Kache in the position of visitor, he begins to go to the house daily to help with repairs, and soon an intimacy develops between them. Kache, of course, thinks he is rescuing Nadia, but they each need rescuing, as does Snag. After a year, with the renewing strength of the seasons, as well as the wise insights of Kache’s grandmother Lettie, they all come to grips with their pasts as well as their futures. The ending is a good one, but unconventional and unexpected.Discussion: This is not just a story of love and redemption; nothing is that easy. And it's not just love for a person that is transformative in this book; the characters come to find that the emotion of love alone - the feeling of it, itself, can help you get over a bridge in your life. Moreover, there is a note of sinister menace that rumbles through the plot and keeps you turning the pages far faster than you might for a book only focused on journeys of the heart.Finally, you never are meant to forget the magnificent surroundings of Alaska, whether the characters are looking at the window, or looking at each other:"...there was another type of smile that Kache was learning to appreciate: the shy, rare smile that presented itself as a gift. It wasn't given freely; it had to be earned. Nadia's face had been fearful, watchful. But now and then, her smile came through like determined sunlight working its way down through spruce and aspen branches, and he wanted to close his eyes and tilt back, expose his face to the unexpected warmth of it."Evaluation: This is a surprising and engaging story with an unusual Alaskan setting fully as integral to it as each character. With its unconventional plot lines and ending, it would make a very good choice for book clubs.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I won this book from Sourcebooks...thank you very much.This book is a stunning story filled with engaging characters, loss, and love all set in the wilderness and beauty of Alaska. The main characters Kache who runs away from his heartbreak and feelings of guilt and Nadia who retreats from her heartbreak and isolates herself from life. Sere Prince Halverson has written a compelling story that kept me turning the pages and I didn't want the book to end. Her writing is so exquisite that I will be reading her debut book 'The Underside of Joy.' I highly recommend 'All the Winters After' to anyone who loves reading about family, nature, forgiveness, and life.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A romance. If you must read a romance, this is a nice one; an interesting one is a wonderful setting.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Kristin Hannah tells a good story. Set primarily in Alaska, this is not a new story, a tale of domestic abuse. However, it is a well told tale of what it means to be lost, what it means to face loss, face truth, and what it means to face oneself and heal. One of the primary mantras of the Alaskan characters is that there are a thousand ways to get lost and to die in the wilderness of the state. The moral of the story is that it takes a village!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    beautifully written but ending left open
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    And After The Winter, Sere HalversonWhen the novel begins, the reader learns that three of the four members of the Glenn Winkel family, of Caboose, Alaska, had been killed in a tragic, small plane crash two decades earlier. Kachemak Winkel, 18 years old at the time, had remained at home and was, therefore, the sole survivor of his immediate family. After the crash, in an effort to put the terrible loss of his parents and his brother behind him, he unceremoniously, and without warning, moved to California, abandoning Alaska, his father’s sister Snag, and his grandmother Lettie. They remained there and were supposed to care for the homestead. Over the twenty years that passed, he had had only occasional contact with them. When his father’s now 60 year old twin sister, Aunt Snag, contacted him about the impending death of his grandmother, Lettie, 38 year old Kache returned to the homestead to try and pick up the pieces of his life. He had recently lost his job and, coincidentally, his long time girlfriend so his return fell into place rather neatly. Arriving in Alaska, Kache discovered that a young woman named Nadia, from a community called the Old Believers, had been living in his parents’ homestead and caring for the property by herself. She had many secrets and had not been exposed to very much of the outside world. She had lived there for ten years, alone, and she was completely self sufficient, but she was also terrified of him. Old Believers were a tribe of people from Russia. They did not integrate themselves into modern society and lived in remote parts of Alaska. Their community had split off into several different factions, as well, with some being stricter than others regarding the acceptance of modern technology and amenities.While the novel promised to be a book about life in Alaska, including some interesting information about an unusual community of people called the Old Believers, about whom there was little known, the book became more of a fairytale, a kind of love story with an aspect of mystery and danger tossed in to make it more interesting. While there were some noteworthy facts about the hardship of life in Alaska, the beauty of its landscape, and a few tidbits about the Old Believers, the story didn’t develop into much more than a beach read. It held my interest, but the dialogue often felt corny and hackneyed when representing conversations between the two main characters who were consenting adults, even if one was supposed to be totally unsophisticated and unworldly. In the end, that less informed, young character seemed better informed and more developed than all of the rest of them. Each of them had some kind of a secret which caused them shame and, in some cases, much unwarranted guilt. Each of them blamed themselves for incidents over which they had no control and could not have prevented or caused. As the novel moved ahead, the story traveled back and forth in time revealing each character’s weaknesses and pain, each character’s personal struggles.I wanted it to be the kind of a book I would savor each night, not wanting it to end, but it seemed very simplistic and predictable. On the positive side, the chapters were very short and flew by, making it very easy to read. The characters resolved their issues and all of the ends tied up neatly. There was little left to be guessed about how the lives of the characters would continue after the final page. I had higher hopes for this book when I first began to read it since it was chosen by a literary guild to which I belonged. Instead, it seemed too saccharine and conventional with most of the current problems of today included for good measure, such as sexual choice, alcoholism, and the need to escape from life when it presented itself without its glory, with problems that seemed insurmountable. Each character chose to face their personal challenges in a different way, and yet each one chose the same way, escape and avoidance. Discovering the choices they made and why they made them was the most interesting aspect of the book for me. There were repercussions that influenced each person they touched over which they had no control. The reader will be left wondering if the choices each character made had a positive or negative influence on their future lives and if the choices they made were wise when made or foolishly impetuous. The readers might wonder how they might have reacted in each particular situation.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Alaska is huge and so is this story. There is huge loss, huge growth and huge love attained between the pages of this book. Lettie is a nonagenarian and the matriarch of the Winkel family. Decades previous to the beginning of this book she had a dream, took her husband from the Kansas dustbowl to Alaska and thrived. She is old but not out of the picture and still has things to accomplish before her daughter and grandson can move forward with their lives. Eleanor “Snag” Winkel is in her sixties and believes that love has passed her by. She had dreams but none have really been fulfilled. Little does she know that once her painful secrets are shared her life will change in many ways and all of them positive. Kachemak “Kach” Winkel returns to Alaska to see his grandmother two decades after he lost his entire family in an airplane accident. For twenty years he lived a life that was monetarily rewarding but not necessarily fulfilling. His return to Alaska is the best thing for him and will give him insights he did not have before. Nadia has squatted in the Winkel family home for a decade. She has run from abuse and in so doing lost her family and all she knew before. When Kach shows up on her doorstep her life begins to change and evolve in ways she has only imagined before. This book is one that made me think. It made me wonder. It made me want more for myself and for the characters in the book. When I finished the last page I wanted more…because…the end was not an end but really the beginning. Thoroughly enjoyable and well worth reading – I thank NetGalley and SOURCEBOOK Landmark for the copy of this ARC to read and review.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the kind of book you want to devour in a couple of days because the plot moves along so well. Filled with family secrets, loss, betrayal, affirmation, romance, the beautiful and mysterious Alaskan culture and landscape, this novel has a sinister character in the background and enough secrets to be revealed that it's a page turner.