"Inspired by the Russian fairy tale The Snow Maiden, Eowyn Ivey's deubut novel, The Snow Child (Back Bay: Little, Brown. 2012. ISBN 9780316175661. pap. $14.99; ebk. ISBN 9780316192958), features Jack and Mabel, a childless couple grieving their infant son's death. ...richly evokes landscape and nature as it explores the many types of families that find their way into being."

when I was wiping my eyes at the end — must have been snow blowing in my face — I felt sorry to see these kind people go. Sad as the story often is, with its haunting fairy-tale ending, what I remember best are the scenes of unabashed joy. That isn’t a feeling literary fiction seems to have much use for, but Ivey conveys surprising moments of happiness with such heartfelt conviction. Mabel’s sister puts it well in a letter from Pennsylvania: “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.”

You’ll catch that same magic in the leaves of this book.

Ivey's delightful invention hovers somewhere between myth and naturalism — and the effect this creates is mesmerizing.... A chilly setting? Yes. A sad tale? This terrific novelistic debut will convince you that in some cases, a fantastic story — with tinges of sadness and a mysterious onward-pulsing life force — may be best for this, or any, season.

Once you've revelled in these ambiguities, though, there's a problem with The Snow Child: there isn't a lot more to it. Ivey touches on the question of what it means to be a parent – the impossible desire to capture and tame the very thing you must set free – but only fleetingly, with more imagery than depth. This is pure storytelling, refreshingly ungilded and sympathetic, but little more

The book’s tone throughout has a lovely push and pull—Alaska’s punishing landscape and rough-hewn residents pitted against Faina’s charmed appearances—and the ending is both surprising and earned.