The Snow Child

Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child, published in 2012, is a frank retelling of the Russian fairy tale Snegurochka, or The Snow Maiden. Ivey reimagines the story as the tale of a childless couple, a feral child, and the bleak yet beautiful wilderness of Alaska. The narrative, which imbues historical fiction with a touch of magical realism, was shortlisted for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. It is Ivey’s debut novel.

Plot Summary

It is 1920. Mabel and Jack, a middle-aged couple from Pennsylvania, have taken advantage of a government program that offers cheap land in the Alaskan territory for those15,402 willing to farm the land. They both see relocation as a chance to escape memories of the stillborn death of their child more than 10 years earlier.

Farm life is difficult, and the couple struggles in the brutal environment. While Jack works the farm, Mabel is left alone for long hours during which she dwells on her grief. On the night of the first snowfall, the couple fashions a snowman in a rare moment of play. Because the snow is scarce, they end up with a snow child, but they delight in giving their creation snow curls, a snow dress, and even mittens and a scarf. They are disturbed the following morning when the snow child as well as the mittens and scarf are gone.

Over the next weeks, Jack and Mabel believe they see a mysterious figure, a young girl in a blue coat. Meanwhile, the couple is befriended by their nearest neighbors, the Bensons, a couple with five strapping sons. The big family embraces the couple and with spacious generosity helps them with their farm. As the winter deepens, however, Mabel becomes obsessed with the mysterious child—she remembers a Russian fairy tale from her childhood that told a similar story about a childless couple and a snow maiden, a creature of the wilds, who visits them. Mabel believes that such a miracle has happened.

One morning when Jack follows the girl into the woods, she leads him to a crude hut and then, more shockingly, to a corpse of a man. She identifies him as her father. Now Jack understands the child is not some fairy creature but rather a feral child struggling to live on her own in the wilderness. But he does not tell Mabel.

During the winter, the child’s infrequent visits energize the couple. She at last shares her name: Faina. But the child’s visits stop with the spring. Jack dedicates himself to the farm, and Mabel takes up drawing, a passion she abandoned years earlier, rendering sketches of the mysterious girl. When Jack is hurt in a fall from a horse, the couple again faces catastrophe. But the Bensons come to their assistance, particularly their son Garrett.

With the first snowfall, Faina returns. When Mabel shares with Jack her belief that the child is a miracle gift, he at last tells her about the girl’s wilderness life. The revelation stirs Mabel’s maternal instincts. She now sees Faina as her second chance at motherhood. Mabel redoubles her efforts to get the girl to stay with them in hopes of adopting her. But the child resists, insisting she belongs to the woods.

Eight years pass and the pattern remains: Faina visits in the winter and returns to the woods each spring. Garrett, now a young man, chances to see Faina while he is trapping and falls under the mysterious woman’s spell. Over the next months, Faina and Garrett fall in love. After Faina discovers she is pregnant, with the support of Jack and Mabel, the two marry in an outdoor ceremony. But their happiness is short-lived. The delivery proves difficult. Although the baby boy is healthy, Faina struggles with the roles of mother and wife. She loves her child and Garrett, but she yearns for the open woods. She is wracked by a mysterious fever. Desperate, Garrett fashions a nest of coats in the woods near their cabin, hoping there she might recover. But the following morning Faina is gone. She never returns.

Mabel and Jack are devastated. But unlike when their own child died years earlier, now they console each other. Over the years, they bond with Garrett and their grandson and with the Bensons, and together Mabel and Jack embrace the joys and sorrows of their life together.

In exploring themes of grief, family, and change, The Snow Child illustrates the ways that our yearnings can bring us to a place of mourning and yet also give us healing. Faina’s presence in Mabel and Jack’s lives helps them come to terms with their mourning and enter a new era.