The Last Cold Winter is a historical novel that takes place in Romania at the end of the 1989 Communist Revolution. George Bird, a naturalized American citizen, returns with his thirty-year-old son, Adrian, to the country they had defected from twenty-eight-years earlier. George Bird is dying of lung cancer, and he wishes to see his parents and his country one last time. The trip quickly turns into a nightmare when he is kidnapped the first day back. Adrian, who doesn’t speak Romanian, must now meet the kidnapper’s demand for a list he knows nothing about in order to save his father. With the help of a hotel clerk, Simona, they travel to Transylvania to uncover his father’s troubled past. In the end, the journey helps Adrian understand the circumstances that had influenced his father’s decision to defect, and his need to atone for them now.
