An older couple Jack and Mabel move to a homestead in 1920’s Alaska to find a better quality of life. Mabel quietly longs for the child she lost years before and prefers the isolation of their cabin, rather than socialising at first.
On a rather unusual evening they have fun throwing snowballs and building a snow girl together. After that, each catch a glimpse through the trees of a little girl with a fox.
This is a wonderful book about how people come into each other’s lives, sometimes at the perfect moment. Ivey’s vivid descriptions of the bleak, yet awesome Alaskan countryside and the hard work it takes to survive in this environment really drew me in.
****SPOILER ALERT****
In the entire book there is only a very short and vague sentence which actually ties fact and fairytale together; when Mabel says that Faina surely would have died in the cold had we not built our snow girl at that very same moment, and now Faina is here with us.
The best I have been able to decide is that she is a human who was about to die but through the couples wish to have a child, she was saved and bestowed by nature with powers to thrive in the freezing weather and to control it but also a kind of curse relating to it as well.
Rating 4/5
❤Chrissie❤
Vamp It Up 