Jack and Mabel move to Alaska to try to separate themselves from a tragedy — the loss of their only baby — that has frozen the core of their relationship. They intend to establish a homestead in the wilderness, but it is 1920 and they are middle-aged, friendless and from ‘back east’ — unprepared and ill-equipped for the backbreaking work and unspeakable loneliness of pioneer life. By the middle of their second winter the climate, isolation and sorrow of their situation seem to have got the better of them; at the opening of The Snow Child we find them at the end of their wits and their resources.
During a singular moment’s lightheartedness after a snowfall the desperate couple builds a snow child beside their house and dresses it in hat and scarf. The next morning it has been trampled away and they spy a little girl wearing the snow child’s clothes and flitting about the woods.
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