Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Bayport Public Library | FICTION SHR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | FICTION SHR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | FICTION SHR | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Written from the point of view of 30-year-old Nicky as she recalls the vivid December day, 19 years earlier, when she and her father found an abandoned infant in the snow, this is a beautiful contemporary novel about love and memory from the author of the bestselling All He Ever Wanted and The Pilot's Wife.
Author Notes
Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts. After receiving a bachelor's degree in English from Tufts University, she taught high school English for five years before becoming a full-time author. She worked for an English-language magazine in Nairobi and wrote for everything from Cosmopolitan magazine to The New York Times. Her nonfiction books included Remaking Motherhood and Women Together, Women Alone. Her novels included Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Fortune's Rocks, Rescue, Stella Bain, and The Stars are Fire. Several of her books were made into movies including The Pilot's Wife, Resistance, and The Weight of Water. She died from cancer on March 29, 2018 at the age of 71.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
The prolific Shreve has been a fixture on best-seller lists ever since Oprah picked The Pilot's Wife 0 (1998) as one of her book-club selections. In her latest, Robert Dillon and his 12-year-old daughter, Nicky, discover a newborn baby abandoned in the snowy woods. As they rush the baby to the hospital, Nicky senses that the vulnerable infant has somehow unleashed her and her father's private demons. Nicky lost her mother and baby sister in an automobile accident more than a year earlier; her father's response to his overwhelming grief was to uproot them from their life in New York and move to rural New Hampshire. He has purposefully isolated himself from the outside world, keeping contact with other people to a minimum. But now the abandoned baby has forced them to act, and the two are suddenly plunged into dealing with the world-weary detective who catches the case and, later, with the distraught mother of the baby, who ends up snowbound in their house for days. Her presence forces Nicky and her father to move beyond their personal tragedy. Although Shreve continually underlines her characters' grief and desperation, their emotions seem too neat and their responses somewhat formulaic. Nevertheless, Shreve's expert pacing produces a fast read that will more than satisfy her many fans. --Joanne Wilkinson Copyright 2004 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-After her family has been shattered by the deaths of her mother and baby sister in a car accident, Nicky Dillon, 12, and her father, Robert, move to a small New Hampshire town. One evening, they discover a newborn abandoned in the snow. When the infant's mother, a college student, comes to the Dillon home, the three become snowbound during a blizzard. As she learns the details of the birth, Nicky befriends and tries to hide the young woman from the detective on the case. Shreve explores unwed motherhood and puberty as well as grief and loneliness. Each character is faced with hard choices; each action has consequences. The characters are real, the events believable, and the outcomes realistic. The book is filled with suspense and tension. Shreve's writing is strong, and the treatment of these sensitive issues is handled realistically.-Sheila Janega, Fairfax County Public Library, Great Falls, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
From bestselling Shreve (All He Ever Wanted, 2003, etc.), a curiously listless tale of a grieving dad and daughter who rescue a newborn abandoned in the snow. Not long before Christmas 1983, 12-year-old Nicky Dillon and her father Robert, walking in the woods near their house in New Hampshire, stumble across a baby girl wrapped in a bloody towel, the remnants of her umbilical cord still attached. They race her to the hospital, she survives, and the police launch a hunt for the parents. The Dillons' discovery opens the still-fresh wound inflicted on a mid-December day two years earlier when Nicky's mother and one-year-old sister Clara were killed in a car crash. Robert fled Westchester with his daughter, hoping to escape their memories in rural isolation. When the infant's 19-year-old mother turns up, he doesn't want to have anything to do with her, but he finds he can't turn her in either when a convenient fainting spell and blizzard trap Charlotte in their house. Looking back on these events at age 30--for no evident reason except to give us some reassuring flash-forwards at the close--Nicky mingles the gradual unfolding of Charlotte's story (the rotten father exposed the baby and lied to her about it) with her memories of Mom and Clara and her worries about Dad. A sympathetic local detective's gradual closing in on Charlotte provides the not-very-suspenseful plot movement. The whole tale seems contrived, right down to Nicky's climactic, too-pat confrontation with her father. "Are you just trying to stay sad? To hold on to Mom and Clara?" do not seem like the insights of a 12-year-old. Everything is too easy here, including the fact that we never meet the boy who actually left the newborn to die, so readers can feel comfortably sorry for everyone without having to grapple with any messy moral issues. One of this talented author's lesser efforts, though fans will probably be satisfied by the readable prose and intelligent, albeit shallow, character observation. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
After retreating from a family tragedy to a house tucked away in the New Hampshire woods, 12-year-old Nicky and her father are thrust back into the world when one wintry afternoon they discover an abandoned newborn outdoors. How they deal with the reality of the baby's mother, who shows up at their house, and the detective who is hellbent on putting the pieces together is narrated by a now-adult Nicky looking back at her past. Shreve's latest books (All He Ever Wanted; Sea Glass) have taken historical settings rich with the detail of past customs and language; this is a different sort of tale, not as lush or complicated. But the simplicity of the story and tone, as well as the interesting inner thoughts of an adult looking back and relating a childhood turning point, makes for one addictive read. Readers will be waiting for this one. Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
