Book Review: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
February 12, 2025
This story follows a couple, Jack and Mabel, that feels like they really need a fresh start, and decide to move to Alaska to start a little homestead. They buy a chunk of land near a small Alaskan town, and try to make it work. They buy chickens and they have a horse that helps them work the lands. Before moving to Alaska, they had a miscarriage and feel their marriage crumbling beneath them and feel like moving someplace so remote, will be their saving grace. At the beginning of the book, Mabel takes an attempt on her life by walking over a frozen over, very fast, river that has been known to take the lives of travelers. She does not have success and instead, it makes her reflect on her choices and the reason that she and Jack moved there in the first place. As the first snow arrives, and Mabel has a new lease on life, she and Jack play in the snow and create a little snow girl and dress her with a scarf made by Mabels sister. Once the morning rolls around, the snow girl has been crushed and all of the dressings stolen. Jack thinks it has to be some kind of wild animal, but Mabel isn’t so sure. They start seeing a little girl in a blue jacket, and the dressings that they had fitted to the snow girl, around the homestead but can never get close enough to talk to her. She leaves them little gifts and they do the same. Jack starts befriending a family that he has met in town and, much to Mabels dismay, invites them all over to their house for dinner to ask about the young girl. None of them have even heard of another family around the area, so they say there is no way that there is a young girl, but that they must have cabin fever. Mabel begins to recall an old story that she read often when she was a little girl about an elderly couple who wanted a child so bad that they built her out of snow and she came to life with all the love they had stored up. Could she be living in this classic fairytale or was this little girl lost? Could she have really been made by their hands?
This book felt like it could have ended a couple of times, and I won’t say that is my new favorite book, but it was a good winter read. It was, more than anything, and ode to the families that we build for ourselves and the love that holds us together. It had strong parental themes and was refreshing to read something from a point of view that was flawed and still filled with love. We see a lot of time pass in the pages of the book, and there is a definite ending to the story, while still giving the reader hope for the stories extension beyond the pages. It is a magical book, but still very much something that could have really happened in someone’s life. I am not sure if I missed it in the beginning, I did listen to the book while I was working, but it wasn’t until the end that you find out that it is the early 1920s. Overall, I think I would suggest this book, but it is not one that I would want to read over and over.
