The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The last line of this wonderful is "It's snowing." And today, here, it is, all day long. What a perfect day to read this book, to finish this book, the book Eowyn Ivey has been "longing to tell [her] life" (Guide 6).

Alaska, 1920, a "brutal place to homestead" and especially so for new arrivals, Jack and Mabel. They have come here to reinvent their lives, to finally get past the grief over the death of their only child, to start anew. Jack is struggling to keep their farm going. Mabel is struggling against loneliness and her grief. Then, during the first snowfall, they give to their inner children (or so it seems) and build a snow child. The next morning the child is gone and they see, for the first time, a "young girl running through the trees" (back cover).

Her name is Faina and she "seems to be a child of the woods," a child of the snow, with her red fox at her side. But is she real? Is she snow child in the old Russian fairy tale Mabel cannot forget? That she is real is almost a disappointment but that only brings more questions: how does she survive in the bitter winters, where does she come from. who is she?

The fairy tale remains at the core of this magical novel which is all too believable and real in this story of survival and loss, love and grief, and redemption.

I cried at the end.

Recommended.





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