Light on Snow [Mass Market Paperback]

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The prolific Shreve has been a fixture on best-seller lists ever since Oprah picked The Pilot's Wife (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 © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

This story touches the very deepest human emotions ... Chaucerian in its intense sympathy and its appealing universality ... Shreve's style is fluent and unpretentious, with an irresistible rhythmic and narrative impetus that keeps you up, reading ever faster, all night ... Perceptive, gripping and ultimately exhilarating, this is a very fine book indeed Sue Gaisford, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY Anita Shreve's eleventh novel plunges the reader straight into a gripping narrative ... This is Shreve at her poised best, and her controlled, crisply understated prose makes her emotive subject all the more affecting DAILY MAIL Full of emotional depth, it's not a comfortable read but one that will stay with you a long time. Oprah says that if a book doesn't grab her in the first 50 pages, she moves on. There'll be no need for that 'Read it - Star Choice' DAILY MIRROR 'Emotionally rich ... it's the literary equivalent of a snuggly blanket on a snowy night' --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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.

Anita Shreve is the critically acclaimed author of twelve previous books, includingA Wedding in December, The Pilot's Wife, which was a selection of Oparh's Book Club, andThe Weight of Water,which was a finalist for Englandâs Orange Prize. She Lives in Massachusetts.

A rare and beautiful recounting of the miracle of healing for a family wounded by catastrophic losses who manages to overcome and go forward, sometimes in uncharted and completely unexpected ways. Alyson Silverman's lyrical and sensitive reading showcases Shreve's clear and tempered account of a young girl and her father living in a kind of exile, trying to resume their lives after experiencing almost unimaginable loss and grief. One can literally feel the bone-chilling cold weather and their struggles through the deep snowdrifts as the beautifully developed characters create an experience that leaves the listener feeling privileged to have met such complex and wonderful people and shared their triumphs of spirit. L.C. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.