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Overview
What makes a family? That's what twelve-year-old Nicky Dillon wonders after she and her widowed father discover a wailing abandoned baby in the snow-filled woods near their New Hampshire home. Through the days that follow, the Dillons and an unexpected visitor who soon turns up at their door-a young woman evidently haunted by her own terrible choices-face a thicket of decisions, each seeming to carry equal possibilities of heartbreak and redemption. Writing with all the emotional resonance that has drawn millions of readers around the world to her fiction, Anita Shreve unfolds in Light on Snow a tender and surprising novel about love and its consequences.
Synopsis
A brilliant and beautiful contemporary novel about love and memory from the author of the bestselling novels All He Ever Wanted and The Pilot's Wife.
The events of a December afternoon, during which a father and his daughter find an abandoned infant in the snow, will forever alter the 11-year-old girl's understanding of the world and the adults who inhabit it: a father who has taken great pains to remove himself from society in order to put an unthinkable tragedy behind him; a young woman who must live with the consequences of the terrible choices she has made; and a detective whose cleverness is exceeded only by his sense of justice.
Written from the point of view of 30-year-old Nicky as she recalls the vivid images of that fateful December, her tale is one of love and courage, of tragedy and redemption, and of the ways in which the human heart always seeks to heal itself.
The Washington Post - Chris Bohjalian
The images of Nicky's father alone with his grief or the moment when Nicky menstruates for the first time with no mother with whom to discuss it are authentic and poignant; the complex rush of emotions Nicky experiences around the infant's mom -- fear, fascination and (for a variety of reasons the novel makes clear) adoration -- is a well-drawn microcosm of adolescence. The overall result is a novel that probably won't be studied by Shreve scholars in fifty or a hundred years, but one that nevertheless offers moments that are diverting and pleasurable.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Walking in the snow near their New Hampshire home, a father and daughter come upon an abandoned infant, wrapped in a bloody towel. For the father, this chance discovery reopens a wound: Two years before, he had lost his wife and toddler daughter in a car crash. Now the chance finding of the baby places him on a winding path toward healing.Chris Bohjalian
The images of Nicky's father alone with his grief or the moment when Nicky menstruates for the first time with no mother with whom to discuss it are authentic and poignant; the complex rush of emotions Nicky experiences around the infant's mom -- fear, fascination and (for a variety of reasons the novel makes clear) adoration -- is a well-drawn microcosm of adolescence. The overall result is a novel that probably won't be studied by Shreve scholars in fifty or a hundred years, but one that nevertheless offers moments that are diverting and pleasurable.— The Washington Post
John Hartl
How should the father and daughter behave toward this disarmingly soft-spoken monster? Does she have a story to tell that would explain, even justify, her behavior? Shreve prolongs the suspense nicely, although she wraps everything up a bit too quickly and too glibly. Still, this small-scale story leaves you with a genuinely unnerving sense of larger forces at work -- only this time, bad things might lead to good.— The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
An after-school stroll leads to a life-altering event for widower Robert Dillon and his 12-year-old daughter, Nicky, in this delicate new novel by acclaimed author Shreve (All He Ever Wanted, etc.). In the woods surrounding their secluded home in Shepherd, N.H., Robert and Nicky make a startling discovery-a baby abandoned and left to die in the snow. The infant survives, but the incident leaves its mark. Still recovering from the painful loss of her mother and infant sister two years earlier, and readjusting to the shock of a sudden move from suburban Westchester to rural Shepherd, Nicky struggles to reconcile her innocent notions of adult integrity with the bleak reality of their discovery. The tenuous sense of normalcy Robert manages to sustain is broken with the appearance of Charlotte, the baby's young mother, on his doorstep. Retold 18 years later by an adult Nicky but written in the present tense, the story shifts brilliantly between childlike visions of a simple world and the growing realization of its cruel ambiguities. Aside from a few saccharine moments and a rather pat ending, Shreve does a skilled job of portraying grief, conflict and anger while leaving room for hope, redemption and renewal. Her characters are sympathetic without being pitiable, and her prose remains deceptively simple and eloquent throughout. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. (Oct. 12) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.KLIATT
We look for novels published for adults that have immediate appeal for YAs, and Shreve's Light on Snow is just such a book. First of all, it is told in the voice of a 12-year-old girl, Nicky, who lives alone with her father in an isolated setting in New Hampshire. We soon learn they are in their second year of grieving the deaths of the mother and baby sister of the family; Nicky and her father are trying to cope with their overwhelming emotions of loss and grief, and in the differences they are in conflict. Nicky yearns for reconnection, for family; her father is hesitant to make any connections at all. Into this emotional situation, in the snowy winter, comes an almost Christmas-like event: Nicky and her father discover a newborn baby abandoned in the woods behind their home; they rescue the child, taking her to a nearby hospital, are written about in the local paper, and thereby set off a chain of events that make up the plot of this riveting story. The desperate teenage mother of the abandoned baby, wanted by the law, comes to their door, and in Nicky and her father's response to her needs lies the healing for their own loss. This story offers many opportunities for discussions with teenagers about grieving, about responsibility, about connections. Shreve writes with vivid images, in lyrical, yet sparse prose. The characters are heartbreakingly appealing. KLIATT Codes: SA*—Exceptional book, recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2004, Little, Brown, Back Bay, 305p., Ages 15 to adult.—Claire Rosser