What a captivating story! I loved this book. It takes place in Alaska in 1920. Jack and Mabel, a childless couple from Pennsylvania have decided to homestead in a brutal place: Alaska. They are drifting apart--he
breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from
loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first
snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow
child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running
through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to
be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims
lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan
wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who
could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her
as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are
rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will
transform all of them.
