Olivier Norek’s The Winter Warriors is a fictional account of a little-known and long-forgotten war between the Soviet Union and Finland. I say fictional, but it’s based on very real people with sometimes very long, very confusing names.

(I was reminded of my favorite optometrist joke: A Czechoslovakian sits in the chair, and the doctor asks him to read a line on an eye chart. “Read it?” the man replies. “I know that guy!”)

Aside from being overwhelmed by monikers as lengthy as a Siberian winter, I had shivers down my spine while reading this excellent book. Literally.

It was cold when Stalin invaded Finland in November 1939. How cold? The cannon-fodder conscripts (usually Ukrainians and other non-Russian minorities deemed expendable) froze to death in large numbers because the Soviets failed to provide them with proper winter garb. When these men were shot, their chances of making it often hinged on whether the wound froze before they bled out.

Like I said, it was cold.

Stalin’s unprovoked attack found most everybody sympathetic to Finland. Hardly anyone could understand why the gigantic Soviet Union (population 170 million) would manufacture a border crisis with a young, tiny nation (population 3.7 million) and then invade it. More confounding, the Great Leader in Moscow didn’t bother with logistics, skimping on medical and other supplies for his poorly trained troops.

When it’s 50 degrees below zero, the ability to keep moving is vital. Many Red Army soldiers who fell asleep on guard duty froze solid. And if it’d been their job to keep their comrades awake? Well, it was icicle city for the whole platoon. (Further accelerating the Soviet mortality rate: Each unit had a resident political commissar who thought nothing of summarily executing soldiers — including officers — whose performance made Mother Russia look bad.)

The Finns battled the elements, too, of course. But they had warm clothing and fast skis, the latter of which they utilized masterfully. By the end of the brief war — which concluded in March 1940 after diplomatic maneuvering by the Allies, whose attention was focused warily on the Nazis — Finland had suffered around 70,000 casualties. Unofficial reports put the Soviet Union’s casualty count exponentially higher. Stalin had expected a walkover. Instead, he got a wake-up call.

There are several outstanding characters here, first among them Simo Häyhä, the uncannily skilled Finnish sniper dubbed (with grudging respect) “the White Death” by his enemy targets. There’s Lieutenant Aarne Juutilainen, a drunkard who’s so mean and reckless that he’s nicknamed “the Terror” by his own men (but who’s also a whiz at killing Red Army soldiers). And there’s Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, a decorated military leader revered in Finland to this day.

All of these people were real, and the internet makes it easy to find out what happened to them. But don’t go looking online — at least, not until you’ve read this terrific novel. In skillfully retelling their story, Olivier Norek reveals that Finland’s sons didn’t die in vain during the Winter War. In fact, when Hitler foolishly invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, he was met by brutal cold and scores of appropriately clad Reds on skis. A Russian soldier said his unit had learned it from the Finns.

Since 2005, Lawrence De Maria has written 40 thrillers and mysteries on Amazon.