The Snow Child
Synopsis:
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.
My Review:
Beautiful
and haunting. I loved this book. One review described it as "a brutally
realistic fairy tale," and I couldn't agree more. This book was more
than just a fairy tale though. I think I will find myself thinking about
the many topics in this book that provoke questions about love,
mortality, parenthood, sacrifice and just the mysteries of life in
general. Definitely on the top of my favorite reads list!!
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