Winger is a young adult novel written by American author Andrew Smith and first published in 2013. It belongs to the genre of contemporary early 21st century teen fiction and garnered recognition from the American Library Association (ALA), Publishers Weekly, and the Junior Library Guild. Because of Winger’s storyline involving LGBTQIA+ issues, it was also chosen as part of the ALA’s 2014 Rainbow List in 2014, made up of books for children and young adults that feature high-quality LGBTQIA+ content.

Smith is a high school teacher from California who has written 14 novels as of early 2021.

This guide refers to the edition of Winger with the ISBN 978-1-4424-4493-5 (first edition paperback, copyright 2013 by Simon and Schuster BFYR).

Plot Summary

Winger’s protagonist is 14-year-old Ryan Dean West, a junior at an elite boarding school in Oregon called Pine Mountain. The school is attended by the troubled sons and daughters of wealthy, elite professionals. As he enters his junior year, Ryan Dean is determined to become more confident and well-liked by his classmates, especially his best friend and crush, Annie Altman. Because Ryan Dean is two years younger than his classmates, he feels different from and socially inferior to them, a dynamic he wrestles with throughout the story.

Over the course of the first few months of the school year, Ryan Dean’s relationships with his classmates evolve as he experiences both closeness and conflict with his peers. The novel follows Ryan Dean’s school routine as he attends classes, participates in the school’s rugby program, and spends time with his friends. He grapples with questions of self-esteem, sexuality, romantic relationships, and friendship. He makes and loses friends, develops a romantic relationship with Annie, explores his beliefs about himself and others, and creates bonds with nurturing adults to fulfill the emotional needs unfulfilled by his distant parents.

One of the most important relationships in the novel is between Ryan Dean and one of his older classmates, Joey. Joey is openly gay, which creates tension and unease between him and some of his schoolmates. Many of Joey and Ryan Dean’s fellow rugby players embrace Joey’s identity on the surface but remain uncomfortable around him. Ryan Dean also experiences this discomfort initially, but eventually grows close to Joey and considers him his best friend.

The biases of other students at Pine Mountain lead to a tragic climax over Halloween, as two homophobic students—one of whom is secretly struggling with his own identity as a gay person—murder Joey, an act that profoundly traumatizes Ryan Dean. He eventually emerges from his experiences with a newfound sense of self-acceptance and resilience as he recovers from the pain of Joey’s death.