The Snow Child – Eowyn Ivey
Eowyn Ivey hooked me early. Set in 1920s Alaska, “The Snow Child” leans into all the usual tropes — isolated homesteaders, untamed wilderness, the thin line between survival and surrender — but I’m a sucker for these kinds of stories. I first heard about this book while in Juneau, so maybe I was predisposed to like it. And, at times, I really did.
Loosely based on Russian and Scandinavian folklore, the story unfolds like a darker “Frosty the Snowman.” A child, conjured from snow, vanishes with the spring thaw. Mabel and Jack, a grieving couple from Pennsylvania trying to homestead in Alaska, build a snow girl in a rare moment of joy. The next morning, she’s gone, but a real child appears in the woods, seemingly born of winter itself. Her name is Faina, and she moves through the snow with a fox at her side, elusive and eerie, almost certainly not entirely human.
Faina becomes a mystery the couple longs to solve, a daughter-shaped hole they’re desperate to fill. As they slowly earn her trust, the novel begins to shift. Is she real or imagined? A coping mechanism or a miracle? Eventually, it’s clear she’s more than figment – she leads Jack to her father’s frozen body and a cabin where she once lived — but she still carries a kind of supernatural tether to the snow. Neighbors never see her, and snowfall seems to follow her presence.
There’s a rich, often beautiful portrayal of homesteading life here. Ivey doesn't shy away from the grinding reality of farm work, isolation and the quiet desperation of a couple running out of reasons to hope.
Jack and Mabel are written with tender interiority, and I appreciated the way their relationship evolves from a brittle routine into something warmer, more equal. When Jack injures his back, a neighbor’s son, Garret, steps in to help, becoming a kind of surrogate son. Eventually, Faina and Garret fall in love, marry and have a child, but the more people ask Faina to stay, the more the magic fades.
I can absolutely see why people love this book. At times it’s haunting and lyrical, but something didn’t sit right with me. There’s a recurring theme of “taming” Faina – pulling her from the wild, domesticating her in the name of love and belonging. While Faina is not Indigenous, the parallels are hard to ignore.
Ivey, an Alaskan writer, never really engages with the implications of this. She sidesteps the uncomfortable parts, wrapping them in the softness of fairy tale logic. That frustrated me. I wanted more for Faina — more autonomy, more resistance and more space to remain wild without being cast as tragic or unlovable.
It reminded me, oddly, of Delia Owens’ “Where the Crawdads Sing,” though “The Snow Child” predates it. Both novels trace the arc of a girl surviving on her own, only to be slowly drawn into the orbit of others who insist they know what’s best for her. In both, it’s love that demands they shrink. In both, freedom requires an ending.
What I did appreciate was the way Ivey uses the landscape, not just as setting, but as a character. Alaska is breathtaking and brutal, a mirror for the characters’ grief and grit. The audiobook, narrated by Thérèse Plummer, is excellent. She gives each character a distinct emotional texture, especially Faina’s quiet innocence and Esther’s loud, loving chaos. Plummer is a standout narrator I don’t hear often enough.
Ultimately, this was a middle-of-the-road read for me. Compelling and well-crafted, but limited by the boundaries it refused to push. Faina deserved more than she was given. Maybe that’s the point; the fairy tale was always going to end this way.
But that doesn’t mean it had to.
Rating (story): 3/5 stars
Rating (narration): 4/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: June 17 – June 21, 2025
Multi-tasking: Okay. Honestly, I listened to this mostly on a road trip, which helped me pick up on the finer details and character work, but I also got bored. All that to say, it’s probably best to do some light multitasking while reading.
