Wintering is the story of a woman forging a new life for herself after her marriage has foundered. She shuts up her beloved Devonshire house and makes a home for her two young children in London, elated at completing the collection of poems she foresees will make her name. It is also the story of a woman struggling to maintain her mental equilibrium, to absorb the pain of her husband's betrayal, and to resist her mother's engulfing love. It is the story of Sylvia Plath.

In this deeply felt novel, Kate Moses re-creates Sylvia Plath's last months, weaving together the background of her life before she met Ted Hughes with the disintegration of their relationship and the burst of creativity this triggered. It is inspired by Plath's original ordering and selection of the poems in Ariel—which begins with the word "love" and ends with "spring"—a mythic narrative of defiant survival quite different from the chronological version edited by Hughes. At Wintering's heart, though, lie the two weeks in December 1962 when Plath finds herself still alone and grief-stricken, despite all her determined hope. With exceptional empathy and lyrical grace, Moses captures her poignant and courageous struggle to confront not only her future as a woman, an artist, and a mother, but also the unbanished demons of her past.