The Snow Child

by Eowyn Ivey

Overview

In this magical debut, a couple's lives are changed forever by the arrival of a little girl, wild and secretive, on their snowy doorstep.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316175661
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	11/06/2012
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	21,054
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Eowyn LeMay Ivey was raised in Alaska and continues to live there with her husband and two daughters. She received her BA in journalism and minor in creative writing through the honors program at Western Washington University, studied creative nonfiction at the University of Alaska Anchorage graduate program, and worked for nearly 10 years as an award-winning reporter at the Frontiersman newspaper. This is her first novel.

Interviews

Five Questions for Eowyn Ivey, Author of The Snow Child
How did you discover the fairy tale that inspired The Snow Child?
I work as a bookseller in Alaska, and one night I was shelving books when I came across a children's illustrated version of the Russian fairy tale Snegurochka. It caught my eye in part because it was illustrated by Alaskan artist Barbara Lavallee. As I read through it quickly there in the store, it was like a revelation - a fairy tale set in a snowy landscape that could be my own backyard! Over the next months, I became obsessed with Snegurochka. I abandoned another novel I had been working on. I began uncovering the many versions of the snow maiden that have been told over hundreds of years and portrayed in Russian lacquer paintings, children's books, even an opera and ballet. I knew this was a story I was meant to tell.
How much did your own life in Alaska influence your writing of the novel?
In many ways, we share some day-to-day similarities with the main characters. My husband, two daughters, and I live in a relatively rural area of Alaska, we raise a vegetable garden and chickens, we hunt moose and caribou for meat, and we gather wild berries. All this saved me a lot of research as I wrote The Snow Child - I know what it's like to live through a dark Alaska winter, to eat moose and potatoes for dinner, to make wild berry jam. The difference is that if we fail at these endeavors, we have other options. We have credit cards and grocery stores, careers, and the assistance of family. As I wrote The Snow Child, I had to imagine what it would be like to be in the Alaska wilderness with no safety nets, to be entirely dependent on the land itself.
Did you know when you began writing The Snow Child how it would end?
It seems strange, but no. In fact, during much of the time I was writing it, I wanted it to end in an entirely different way. I kept considering the different versions of the fairy tale, with their different outcomes, just as Mabel does in the story. I assumed that as the creator of the novel, I would be able to choose what happened. But instead the characters and the themes set the story on a trajectory of its own. As far as the writing process, the last chapters came very quickly. I knew they were right. But, at the same time, I found it emotionally challenging.
Are you working on another novel? What is it about?
I have started my next novel. Like The Snow Child it will be set in historical Alaska with some fantastical elements. But this story will be more epic in scope and more adventurous. I was awarded a grant to research the novel, so my husband and I spent a week floating a rugged section of the Copper River here in Alaska. It was an amazing experience - we had seals swimming up to our raft, glaciers calving around us, and brown bears watching us from shore. So far, writing the next novel has been a lot of fun!
How important have books been in your life?
If I was forced to choose only one form of entertainment for the rest of my life, it would be books - over movies or TV, music or art or theater, all of which I enjoy also. For as long as I can remember, the written word has been a part of my consciousness. My mom, Julie LeMay, is a poet who read to me constantly when I was a little girl. As I got older, I read books to escape to other worlds, to explore and be entertained. Both my parents are avid readers, and my husband used to joke that our house was like a library - books everywhere and everyone reading. As I've gotten older, I realize that books also have the ability to shape our understanding of the world. They inform us and touch us and make us who we are. I think that is what led me to become a bookseller and eventually to write a novel - a desire to contribute in some small way to the world of literature.
Who have you discovered lately?
As a part of a book club, I just read The Housekeeper and the Professor, a novel by Japanese author Yoko Ogawa. It is a deceptively slim (only 190 pages) and quiet book, but one of my favorite recent reads. It's about things I don't usually find interesting - baseball, math - but the way Ogawa writes about these aspects of the story, and her portrayals of her characters, is so tender and moving. Any book that makes me think of mathematics as beautiful and magical has got to be special!
I also just finished The Book of Summers by Emylia Hall. It hasn't been released yet, but my UK publisher sent me an early reading copy. The novel is about a young girl growing up in England and spending her summers in Hungary. Hall places you so firmly in each of these places, it's like going on a travel adventure. But my favorite part of the novel is the twist in the plot - positively stunning!

Editorial Reviews

"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

"Eowyn Ivey's exquisite debut transports the reader away to a world almost out of time, into a fairytale destined to both chill and delight. Her portrayal of an untamed Alaska is so detailed you can feel the snowflakes on your own eyelashes, even as her characters' desperate quest for, and ultimate redemption by, love will warm your heart."—Melanie Benjamin, author of Alice I Have Been

"Magical, yes, but THE SNOW CHILD is also satisfyingly realistic in its depiction of 1920s homestead-era Alaska and the people who settled there, including an older couple bound together by resilient love. Eowyn Ivey's poignant debut novel grabbed me from the very first pages and made me wish we had more genre-defying Alaska novels like this one. Inspired by a fairy tale, it nonetheless contains more depth and truth than so many books set in this land of extremes."—Andromeda Romano-Lax, author of The Spanish Bow

"This book is real magic, shot through from cover to cover with the cold, wild beauty of the Alaskan frontier. Eowyn Ivey writes with all the captivating delicacy of the snowfalls she so beautifully describes."—Ali Shaw, author of The Girl with Glass Feet

"Long winters come alive in Ivey's novel about 1920s-era homesteaders in Alaska."—Tina Jordan, New York Times

From the Publisher

"Spellbinding."

Gill Hudson

"Captivating."

San Francisco Chronicle

"Bewitching."

Meganne Fabrega

"A magical yet brutally realistic tale."

Karen Holt

"Ivey sets up the two most powerful forces in any story: fear on the one hand, potential for the miraculous on the other."

Susan Salter Reynolds

"Full of wonder, longing, hope, pain, and beauty...The Snow Child will keep you frozen in its spell until the very last word."

Sarah Willis

"The real magic of The Snow Child is that it's never as simple as it seems, never moves exactly in the direction you think it must...Sad as the story often is, with its haunting fairy-tale ending, what I remember best are the scenes of unabashed joy."

Ron Charles

"Ivey's prose is beautiful and precise...Magical...As real and mysterious as winter's first snowflake."

Buzzy Jackson

"This book is real magic, shot through from cover to cover with the cold, wild beauty of the Alaskan frontier. Eowyn Ivey writes with all the captivating delicacy of the snowfalls she so beautifully describes."

Ali Shaw

"Magical, yes, but THE SNOW CHILD is also satisfyingly realistic in its depiction of 1920s homestead-era Alaska and the people who settled there, including an older couple bound together by resilient love. Eowyn Ivey's poignant debut novel grabbed me from the very first pages and made me wish we had more genre-defying Alaska novels like this one. Inspired by a fairy tale, it nonetheless contains more depth and truth than so many books set in this land of extremes."

Andromeda Romano-Lax

"Eowyn Ivey's exquisite debut transports the reader away to a world almost out of time, into a fairytale destined to both chill and delight. Her portrayal of an untamed Alaska is so detailed you can feel the snowflakes on your own eyelashes, even as her characters' desperate quest for, and ultimate redemption by, love will warm your heart."

Melanie Benjamin

"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

"A transporting tale . . . an amazing achievement."

Sena Jeter Naslund

"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

"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

Here's a modern retelling of the Russian fairy tale about a girl, made from snow by a childless couple, who comes to life. Or perhaps not modern—the setting is 1920s Alaska—but that only proves the timelessness of the tale and of this lovely book. Unable to start a family, middle-aged Jack and Mabel have come to the wilderness to start over, leaving behind an easier life back east. Anxious that they won't outlast one wretched winter, they distract themselves by building a snow girl and wrap her in a scarf. The snow girl and the scarf are gone the next morning, but Jack spies a real child in the woods. Soon Jack and Mabel have developed a tentative relationship with the free-spirited Faina, as she finally admits to being called. Is she indeed a "snow fairy," a "wilderness pixie" magicked out of the cold? Or a wild child who knows better than anyone how to survive in the rugged north? Even as Faina embodies a natural order that cannot be tamed, the neighborly George and Esther show Jack and Mabel (and the rest of us) how important community is for survival. VERDICT A fluid, absorbing, beautifully executed debut novel; highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 9/21/11.]—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Library Journal

This debut novel, based on the Russian fairy tale of the snow maiden, slowly unfolds with an air of enchantment, which is reflected perfectly in Debra Monk's thoughtful narration. Mabel and Jack have moved to the Alaskan wilderness to try to escape their grief over their childlessness. In a rare moment of delight brought on by the first snowfall, they build a snow maiden. The next morning, she’s gone, as are the red scarf and mittens used to decorate her. Soon, the couple is catching glimpses of a girl running in the trees, a girl wearing a red scarf and mittens. Monk's performance ideally supports the story's sense of cold and the stillness that a snowfall brings, along with the muted undercurrent of melancholy that gently transforms into joy. K.O. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2012 - AudioFile

A couple struggling to settle in the Alaskan wilderness is heartened by the arrival of the child of their dreams--or are they literally dreaming her? Jack and Mabel, the protagonists of Ivey's assured debut, are a couple in their early 50s who take advantage of cheap land to build a homestead in Alaska in the 1920s. But the work is backbreaking, the winters are brutally cold and their isolation only reminds them of their childlessness. There's a glimmer of sunshine, however, in the presence of a mysterious girl who lurks near their cabin. Though she's initially skittish, in time she becomes a fixture in the couple's lives. Ivey takes her time in clarifying whether or not the girl, Faina, is real or not, and there are good reasons to believe she's a figment of Jack and Mabel's imaginations: She's a conveniently helpful good-luck charm for them in their search for food, none of their neighbors seem to have seen the girl and she can't help but remind Mabel of fairy tales she heard in her youth about a snow child. The mystery of Faina's provenance, along with the way she brightens the couple's lives, gives the novel's early chapters a slightly magical-realist cast. Yet as Faina's identity grows clearer, the narrative also becomes a more earthbound portrait of the Alaskan wilderness and a study of the hard work involved in building a family. Ivey's style is spare and straightforward, in keeping with the novel's setting, and she offers enough granular detail about hunting and farming to avoid familiar pieties about the Last Frontier. The book's tone throughout has a lovely push and pull--Alaska's punishing landscape and rough-hewn residents pitted against Faina's charmed appearances--and the ending is both surprising and earned. A fine first novel that enlivens familiar themes of parenthood and battles against nature.

Kirkus Reviews