Product Details:
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Little Brown & Co
ISBN-10: 0316175668
ISBN-13: 9780316175661
Sku: 228684393
Publish Date: 11/6/2012
Pages:
416
See more in Historical
|
From the Publisher:
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he struggling to maintain the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young 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 and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel come to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they begin to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent territory things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform them all. |
Annotation:
Eowyn Ivey brings a passionate first-hand knowledge of the Alaskan landscape to her enchanting debut novel. Searching for relief from the pain over their inability to have a child, Mabel and Jack move to Alaska hoping that life in the wilderness will bring them new and distracting challenges. Instead, they find their life there even lonelier than before. One day, in an unusually capricious moment, they build a child out of snow in the yard. The next day the figure is gone, but a young girl appears and becomes the center of their lives. Based on a Russian fairy tale, THE SNOW CHILD does not have an easy, happy ending, but the book's explorations of love, relationships, joy, parenting, and the passing of time are powerfully beautiful.
Eowyn Ivey brings a passionate first-hand knowledge of the Alaskan landscape to her enchanting debut novel. Searching for relief from the pain over their inability to have a child, Mabel and Jack move to Alaska hoping that life in the wilderness will bring them new and distracting challenges. Instead, they find their life there even lonelier than before. One day, in an unusually capricious moment, they build a child out of snow in the yard. The next day the figure is gone, but a young girl appears and becomes the center of their lives. Based on a Russian fairy tale, THE SNOW CHILD does not have an easy, happy ending, but the book's explorations of love, relationships, joy, parenting, and the passing of time are powerfully beautiful.
Praise
"The real magic of this story is that it's never as simple as it seems, never moves exactly in the direction you think it must. (Beware what you read or hear about THE SNOW CHILD. The plot is a fragile crystal of suspense that will easily melt in the hands of enthusiastic fans.)"
- Ron Charles
01/31/2012
"Eowyn Ivey plays with the Russian tale 'The Snow Maiden,' turning it into a stunning and startling adult novel, full of wonder, longing, hope, pain and beauty."
- Sarah Willis
02/02/2012












