Eowyn Ivey

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, 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,...

Birdie splits her days between caring for her six-year-old daughter, Emaleen, and working as a waitress at a roadside lodge in Alaska. But this is not the life she'd dreamed of as a child. Back then, she had fantasized about being free in the world of nature. Arthur is a soft-spoken recluse--but when he shows up at Birdie's lodge one day and she serves him honey and tea, the two form a friendship, and as they eventually fall in love Birdie begins...