Alaskan Beauty and Mystery

The Snow Child 

by Eowyn Ivey

“We never know what is going to happen, do we? Life is always throwing us this way and that. That’s where the adventure is. Not knowing where you’ll end up or how you’ll fare. It’s all a mystery, and when we say any different, we’re just lying to ourselves. Tell me, when have you felt most alive?”   ― Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child




This is a simple story inspired by a famous Russian fairy tale. In its narrative complications abound and the the story grow more and more complex as it encompasses multiple story lines. Changes abound in this novel, as one might expect in a story inspired by an older long lasting piece of imaginative literature; one that has inspired operas, ballets, films, and other similar tales.*

At the opening we meet Mabel and Jack, a childless couple who have moved to the wilds of Alaska to start farming. The work and the weather is brutal, but they are committed not just to surviving, but to succeeding. Early on we are told by the narrator:

“All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light.”(p 5)

Mabel's dreams seem to come true when a young girl appears the day after they had built a child out of snow. The young girl is elusive with a feral, yet magical appearance. They barely survive the first winter and, as they prepare to plant a crop of potatoes for the following year, Jack is injured by his horse when it is startled by a bear. Fortunately, their neighbors Esther, George, with their youngest son Garrett help them to get their crop planted. The story continues to follow the intrigue between the snow girl and the travails of Mabel and Jack along with young Garrett who continues to work with them on their farm.

The broad outlines of the story do not begin to capture the beautiful magic of the growing relationship between the snow girl, whose name is Faina, and Mabel and Jack. Each is transformed over the course of the narrative, while at the same time the neighbor's young son is growing into manhood. These stories blend together in a way that is unpredictable (at least for this reader) while the families grow together growing to understand and love the nature that surrounds them. The harshness, especially the cold winters, is made palpable by the precise and simple prose of the author.

The Snow Child blends this rough reality with the magic of the fairy tale presence of the snow girl to produce an unusual and wonderful book. The reader experiences something like the following:
"It was as if Mabel had fallen through a hole into another world . . . This was an untidy place, but welcoming and full of laughter."(p 31) 

There is also sadness and ultimately the satisfaction of lives that incorporate some of the magic of believing as they deal with the reality of a harsh but beautiful world.

*The Snow Maiden