Pioneer Summer

Summary

A #1 bestselling star-crossed gay romance that took readers by storm and made international news when it was banned in Russia.

The year is 1986, and Yurka Konev, sixteen, has been sent off for another summer at Pioneer camp. Impulsive, forthright, and unfairly branded as a troublemaker, he anticipates the weeks ahead of him with boredom and dread. But when he’s pushed into working on the camp’s theater production, he meets serious, thoughtful troop leader Volodya. Yurka finds himself drawn to the slightly older boy, and, surprisingly, Volodya seems to like him, too. The two boys grow closer, and though both fear the consequences of their illegal attraction, its gravity pulls them together.

Now, twenty years later, Yura returns to the abandoned camp to reminisce on the relationship that changed his life forever—and discovers that not all history is destined to remain in the past.

Cowritten by a Ukrainian–Russian duo, Pioneer Summer became a runaway TikTok sensation and number-one bestseller in Russia, reaching such heights of popularity that Putin’s regime stepped in to ban it with Russia’s most restrictive anti-LGBTQ law ever.

Now this swoony romance, translated into English here for the first time, will transport readers to another place and time and introduce them to one of the most memorable relationships of their lives.