The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey is our May/June reading choice recommended by Judy.
Here is an overview of the story:
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.
What are other writers saying about this book:
"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
"THE SNOW CHILD is a vivid story of
isolation and hope on the Alaska frontier, a narrative of struggle with the
elements and the elemental conflict between one's inner demons and dreams, and
the miracle of human connection and community in a spectacular, dangerous world.
You will not soon forget this story of learning to accept the gifts that fate
and love can bring."
-Robert Morgan, author of Gap
Creek