The Winter Station

October 16, 2017
The outbreak of plague in Manchuria during the winter of 1910–1911 tests a Russian doctor’s physical, emotional, and moral stamina in Shields’s accomplished third novel (after The Fig Eater and The Crimson Portrait). When Chief Medical Examiner Baron Rozher Alexandrovich von Budberg learns that two bodies were whisked away from outside the Kharbin train station, he wonders why he wasn’t notified. The czar’s appointed administrator, Gen. Dmitry Khorvat, assures him the corpses were not Russian and so are of no importance, then asks him to investigate the death of a Russian businessman. The businessman’s daughter describes her father coughing up blood before he died. Evidence mounts of a deadly epidemic made worse by a political cover-up. Matters worsen: a public-relations-minded Chinese epidemiologist breaks with tradition to conduct secret autopsies but refuses to shut down the railway during Chinese New Year; plague-wagons patrol the streets removing people who look sick; a doctor ignoring the baron’s pleas to use masks, gloves, and disinfectant succumbs to contagion, as do countless others. Shields’s Kharbin is plagued not only by disease but also by rumor, superstition, pride, and ignorance. This fictional portrait of a man caught in a real-life medical crisis proves affecting and timely in its exploration of conflicts between cultures and classes, ambition and mortality, science and politics.

November 15, 2017
In 1910 Manchuria, a doctor is baffled by a deadly epidemic.Shields (The Crimson Portrait, 2006, etc.) may be the first novelist to tackle the mysterious plague that overtook Manchuria early in the last century. In Kharbin, a railroad hub under the joint control of Czarist Russia and the Chinese empire, Russian physician Baron von Budberg, the city's chief medical examiner, is frustrated when two corpses found near the railway station are spirited away before he can ascertain the cause of death. Soon, such deaths and disappearances are mounting exponentially, both in the hovels of the Chinese laborers and the mansions of the privileged Russian sector. As frigid winter descends, it becomes clear to the Baron and his hospital colleagues that a highly infectious plague has gripped Kharbin. The malady presents initially with mild symptoms, racing pulse and elevated temperature, followed within hours by wracking cough, hemorrhage, and death. The chief difficulty here is that Shields has trouble meshing the disease-thriller aspect of this novel with her almost worshipful character study of the Baron, a humanist equally at home with his Chinese wife, Li Ju, calligraphy lessons, and tea ceremonies as he is with vodka and caviar. Many colorful--or so they are clearly intended--characters cross the Baron's path, including his venal boss, Gen. Khorvat, and his confidants Andreev, a fixer and smuggler, and the dwarf Chang, a tea master. Although his loyalty to less raffish friends as well as his meditative calligraphy practice may lend gravitas to the Baron's persona, he remains a cipher. The depiction of the epidemic hews closely to the known facts: the discarded, frozen bodies, the brutal quarantine methods, and the initially scattershot official response. Unfortunately, though, the narrative is nearly devoid of forward momentum. Rather than do battle, the Baron seems content to ruefully observe the plague's inevitable advance. Potential conflicts, like the Baron's incipient rivalry with a Dr. Wu, whom he views as a young upstart, are never developed.A Manchurian Hot Zone this is not.

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December 1, 2017
Set in the railway outpost of Kharbin, Manchuria, several stories play out against the frigid landscape: the uneasy power play between China, Russia, and Japan in 1910; changing mores necessitated by social proximity; and a devastating epidemic faced by a radically divided medical team. These aspects alone form an interesting study. Added to them are elaborately described cultural traditions involving the tea ceremony, calligraphy, and musings on vodka, which sometimes overshadow the central mystery of a killer disease and disappearing bodies. As in her previous novels (including The Crimson Portrait, 2006), Shields ably evokes the delicate psychological gray area between imagined horrors and a stark, scary reality, gradually introducing readers to a little-known slice of history and then constructing an increasingly nightmarish scenario around it. Unfortunately, the race for solutions to the mystery slows somewhat, as if the narrative flow is trapped in both the snowy setting and the excessive posturing of the characters. Readers focused on the main story line may be frustrated, but others will be captivated by the atmosphere and the various, essay-like ruminations, which evoke Peter Heg's Smilla's Sense of Snow (1993).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2017

In this latest from Shields, whose The Fig Eater is currently in film development, aristocratic Russian medical commissioner in 1910 Kharbin, a Russian-ruled Manchurian city, balances on the razor's edge between Western medical science and Chinese tradition to determine the cause of a deadly epidemic that actually swept the city at the time. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2017

Based on the true story of a 1910 epidemic in the Russian-ruled city of Harbin, Manchuria, this ultrarealistic novel focuses on a Russian aristocrat and his young Chinese wife. The case of a few mysterious fatalities, accompanied by the disappearance of some of the bodies before they can be identified, explodes into a raging contagion. The Baron is the ranking Russian medical officer and wants the official response to be respectful of cultural differences with the local Chinese population. Instead, brutal measures are taken to curb the plague. Vividly, we track the Baron through months of exposure as the bacillus and its vectors of infection elude the investigators. There is no vaccine, no treatment, and no escape as no one is allowed to leave the city. Tens of thousands perish. While the drama lies in the plague and its grisly effects, the true gift of this remarkable novel is its lyrical portrayal of the Baron and his few allies. They retain their moral balance despite fear, hate, and jingoism all around. VERDICT Shields (The Fig Eater) joins the high echelon of Boris Akunin and Sam Eastland in re-creating a time when science and reason vie with superstition and prejudice to protect the helpless subjects of the tsar. [See Prepub Alert, 7/9/17.]--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2017

Based on the true story of a 1910 epidemic in the Russian-ruled city of Harbin, Manchuria, this ultrarealistic novel focuses on a Russian aristocrat and his young Chinese wife. The case of a few mysterious fatalities, accompanied by the disappearance of some of the bodies before they can be identified, explodes into a raging contagion. The Baron is the ranking Russian medical officer and wants the official response to be respectful of cultural differences with the local Chinese population. Instead, brutal measures are taken to curb the plague. Vividly, we track the Baron through months of exposure as the bacillus and its vectors of infection elude the investigators. There is no vaccine, no treatment, and no escape as no one is allowed to leave the city. Tens of thousands perish. While the drama lies in the plague and its grisly effects, the true gift of this remarkable novel is its lyrical portrayal of the Baron and his few allies. They retain their moral balance despite fear, hate, and jingoism all around. VERDICT Shields (The Fig Eater) joins the high echelon of Boris Akunin and Sam Eastland in re-creating a time when science and reason vie with superstition and prejudice to protect the helpless subjects of the tsar. [See Prepub Alert, 7/9/17.]--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.