The Snow Child:
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for
recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he
breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from
loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first
snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow
child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running
through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to
be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims
lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan
wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who
could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her
as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are
rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will
transform all of them.
Praise for The Snow Child:
"If Willa Cather and Gabriel Garcia Marquez had collaborated on a book,
THE SNOW CHILD would be it. It is a remarkable accomplishment -- a
combination of the most delicate, ethereal, fairytale magic and the
harsh realities of homesteading in the Alaskan wilderness in 1918.
Stunningly conceived, beautifully told, this story has the intricate
fragility of a snowflake and the natural honesty of the dirt beneath
your feet, the unnerving reality of a dream in the night. It fascinates,
it touches the heart. It gallops along even as it takes time to pause
at the wonder of life and the world in which we live. And it will stir
you up and stay with you for a long, long time."
-Robert Goolrick, New York Times bestselling author of A Reliable Wife
"THE
SNOW CHILD is enchanting from beginning to end. Ivey breathes life
into an old tale and makes it as fresh as the season' s first snow.
Simply lovely."
-Keith Donohue, New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child
"A transporting tale . . . an amazing achievement."
-Sena Jeter Naslund, New York Times bestselling author of Ahab's Wife
