Early in World War Two, at her twin brother’s funeral, a privileged young woman from Baltimore meets a Navy pilot her same age. Rachel is drawn to Bob’s boyish charm and artistic interests. But she feels prejudice toward the Southerner who comes from a hardscrabble Protestant background, so different from her Jewish upbringing. Bob, in turn, admires the beautiful Rachel, whose drive and decisiveness set her apart from the hometown Alabama sweetheart he seems destined to marry.

As Rachel and Bob begin a tentative long-distance correspondence, the war’s effects on their personal lives challenge each of them to face their own lifelong biases.

When the Navy transfers Bob to Chicago, where Rachel now lives and works, their relationship unexpectedly deepens into an interfaith romance. In this heart-warming historical novel, they overcome their own prejudices in different ways as their love grows.

Available September 1, 2026

From the author:

“First Comes Winter is an American wartime love story. Its message that a person’s conscience can change is timeless, its affirmation of hope universal.”

  • “Set against the turmoil of World War II America, Bill Wilburn’s debut novel First Comes Winter tells a well-crafted love story between a Gentile Southern naval officer and a Jewish social worker from Baltimore. Wilburn holds nothing back in his earnest attempt to explore the racism, bigotry, and inequities his cast of characters reveal and confront as they negotiate the horrors of war. Yet, love and hope lie at the heart of this page-turner.”

    —Michelle Brafman, author of Swimming With Ghosts and Draw Near To Me

  • “Bill Wilburn has written a compelling, romantic story set against the backdrop of World War II. A young Navy dive-bomber pilot struggles with the loss of his flight-school roommate, his initial experiences in combat, and the complicated racial tensions in the military and society at large. A tentative spark, first glimpsed at his roommate’s funeral, is kindled into love through long-distance letters, brief visits, and a search for personal meaning and ethos. If you ever wondered how people manage to fall in love and hold onto each other during time of war, this book will keep you reading until the end.”

    —Bill Hamblet, Captain, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Editor-in-Chief Proceedings, U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis Maryland

  • “Beautifully and sensitively written, Bill Wilburn’s First Comes Winter vividly evokes the racially and ethnically charged atmospherics of World War II America. Through the eyes of the Jewish Rachel and the southern white Methodist Bob, we are drawn into the early stages of the civil rights movement not as a political cause but as a function of decency in the face of discrimination against average individuals with whom the reader can easily identify. A tour de force, all the more admirable for the book’s elegant prose and its scrupulous attention to historical detail.”

    —Menachem Z. Rosensaft, Visiting Professor of the Practice, Cornell Law School and General Counsel Emeritus of the World Jewish Congress

  • “The unforgettable characters in First Comes Winter overcome moral challenges that will resonate with every reader. Fast-paced, superbly written, grim in parts—yet ultimately hopeful—this is a novel every book group should read.”

    —Mortimer Sellers, Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law

  • “Bill Wilburn’s First Comes Winter movingly captures two young people caught up in the dramas of their times – World War II, racial prejudice, heroism and sacrifice, social upheaval – and the painful reverberations of the outside world in their fitful courtship and romance. This lively and probing novel sensitively explores family dynamics in the 1940s – in Baltimore, in New York, in Chicago -- and skillfully brings to the fore issues that are still with us in new and unexpected ways. Bravo to Wilburn on this achievement!”

    —Charles Trueheart, author of Diplomats at War, winner of the 2024 Douglas Dillon Award; former Director of the American Library in Paris 2007-2017

  • “With cinematic breadth and intimate emotional depth, Wilburn captures the quiet, defining moments that shape a life: sweet glances held too long, bursts of compassion that transcend division, and the first times we break with our families in order to become ourselves. First Comes Winter is an intimate epic of profound tenderness and courage, the story of a love that survives distance, trouble, and loss, and emerges, at last, into the promise of something like spring.”

    —Diane Zinna, Author of Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life After Loss and The All-Night Sun

  • “I had just finished reading a New York Times best-seller with my local book club, when I was privileged to read First Comes Winter. I am pleased to relate that it compares favorably with that book. I particularly appreciated the history of some key events of WW2 with the personal dynamics of a very appealing couple’s growing awareness of a deep attraction across very different cultural and geographic lines.”

    —Maurice Handel, former town official

EXCERPTS

  • ‍Bob raised his cup to his lips and flinched. “Watch out, it’s really hot.” He picked up a stainless-steel knife and put its handle end into his coffee.

    Rachel cringed. She’d never seen anyone do that. “What’s that for?”

    “Makes it cooler by just a few degrees, so you can drink it. Works better than just a spoon. Here….” With a flourish of chivalry, Bob dropped Rachel’s knife into her coffee.

    “Might take a minute to cool down,” he said with cheer.

    Rachel thought she saw others at nearby tables see the weirdly angled knife blades sticking up from their cups.

    Their coffees sufficiently cooled, they spent a few minutes talking about what they’d seen in the museum that afternoon. Rachel seemed in a hurry to finish her coffee first. She moved her purse onto her lap where he could see it, hoping that Bob would get the hint that she wanted to leave. After waiting in vain for him to respond, she put on her gloves. She waited a few more moments. Boy, this guy doesn’t pick up cues. “We should get back to my parents’ hotel.”

     They rode back in silence. At the hotel, Bob hugged Ester and Joel a final time and shook hands with Rachel. “Great afternoon. Really enjoyed it.”

     “Yeah, me too,” she lied. “Thanks.”

  • From the oversized envelope she pulled out a watercolor. On the back was written “R.C.L. Moore, Jr. Lt. USN, Chicago 3/14/1944.” That was the day they had met at the restaurant near the Art Institute. She guessed he had made it from memory later that day, after he’d returned to his hotel. It was the first artwork she ever held by an artist she personally knew.

    The watercolor was just abstract enough to convey life and vibrancy, and its balance, proportions, and perspective were exquisite. It showed the view from the Oak Street beach, looking east across Lake Shore Drive and out to Lake Michigan. The centerpiece was the calming lake itself. The sun had risen, so a new day had begun. Around the bases of the trees, yellow daffodils had popped out through the snow. A child’s yellow kite with a whimsical rag tail danced in an early spring breeze, a symbol of hope she was sure Bob intended. Aside from the strollers on the beach, the only figures recognizable as people were a silhouetted man and woman seen from the back. They sat on a park bench, their heads leaning together as they gazed at the jeweled shimmer that connected them to the far horizon where sky and water met. To Rachel, the scene suggested the two were talking about the possibilities in their future together, as limitless as the expanse before them. 

    With the sky and lake so prominent, the painting’s dominant color was blue in countless shades. Rachel remembered telling Bob at the restaurant that this was what she liked about Chicago, that everything was so blue. As she studied the couple in the watercolor, she now understood his comment that blue was “honest.” In her eighth-grade art class, her watercolor set had contained only a handful of basic colors that had to be mixed to make new shades. She examined Bob’s work more closely. Its joy and optimism came from its unique mix of colors, each strong yet very different.

  • On seeing Bob, Rachel’s dark eyes lit up like twin Fourth of July sparklers. Her upswept hair showcased her high cheekbones and graceful neck. Her metallic green dress was form-fitting, mermaid-style, with enough décolletage to suggest but not look excessive. Her shoulders were bare. A simple pearl necklace and matching earrings contrasted with her complexion and illuminated her smile and eyes. In honor of the evening, she had fastened a small pin shaped like the boot of the Italian peninsula to her dress. When she stepped forward to greet and kiss him, her dress accentuated slim, swiveling hips and legs. Picasso in his cubist phase, Bob smiled, would also see an emerald below and a diamond above, faceted, radiant, alive.