A beautiful, magic-tinged tale of an aging couple, the bleak Alaskan wilderness and a child who appears one day in the wood.
Mabel and Jack always wanted a child, but after suffering a miscarriage, they begin to lose hope of ever conceiving. Mabel suffers in female society without a child of her own.
She begs Jack to take her to Alaska for a fresh start. He agrees. But it doesn’t work.
The weather is dark and freezing. The ground is hard and takes more effort than Jack can give. They aren’t thriving.
“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. … Mabel could not remember the last time she caught such a flicker.” pg 6, ebook.
Then, out of the blue, a child magically appears during a snow storm.
She is so light on her feet and silent, Jack and Mabel don’t at first believe their eyes. The child travels with a fox and barely leaves prints to follow on the snow.
“What did he expect to find? A fairy-tale beast that holds young girls captive in a mountain cave? … Or nothing at all, no child, no tracks, no door, only insanity bared in the untouched snow? That is perhaps what he feared the most, that he would discover he had followed nothing more than an illusion.” pg 72, ebook.
Mabel remembers a Russian fairy tale from her childhood, of a couple who builds a girl out of snow. In the story within the story, the girl becomes real.
Could Jack and Mabel have created the child they have always dreamed of?
“I am sorry to say no matter which version, the story ends badly. The little snow girl comes and goes with winter, but in the end she always melts.” pg 96, ebook.
How will Jack and Mabel’s story end?
Recommended for fans of historical fiction and tales that contain magical realism.
“In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.” pg 189, ebook.
I thought The Snow Child was beautiful and well-told. Highly recommended.
I don’t think The Snow Child has been made into a film, yet, but it has been staged as a musical play.
Thanks for reading!
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