The Snow Child

Jack at first seems distant, unable and even unwilling to give in to his emotions. But Jack is heroically stoic. Certainly Mabel is consumed with grief, but Jack has also suffered the loss of a child. His heart is also broken. His bond with Garrett reveals the depth of his yearning for the son he buried. His offer to share ownership of the farm with Garrett reveals not only his gratitude but also his hunger to be a father.

He is helpless as to how to help Mabel deal with her depression. He agrees to leave his family farm outside Philadelphia for his wife. For her, he stays focused on the hard challenges of making a farm in the frontier work. In his 50s, he works long days; when he is hurt in a fall from his horse, he commits himself to recovery and refuses to indulge the easy escapes of liquor and opium.

His handling of the mysterious child, however, reveals how deeply committed he is to Mabel and the unsuspected depth of his sensitivity to the magnitude of their shared loss. Long before Mabel, Jack understands that this apparently magic snow child is very real and needs their help just to survive. He opts to hide the facts from Mabel as he learns them about the girl, certain that his grieving wife needs to believe in her fairy tale. And over the years he continues his commitment to ensuring the child survives each winter.

Unlike Mabel, Jack understands early on the need for external support. Jack is not too proud to accept help from the Bensons; long before Mabel, he recognizes the blessings of others. In the closing scenes, with his heart restored, Jack finds consolation in the roles of husband, grandfather, and friend.

It is tempting to see Faina as the enchanted snow child, a gauzy incarnation of a fairy-tale creature, a sort of Frosty the Snowman figure who comes and goes with the magical first snow of the season. Because the narrative is limited to Mabel and Jack’s perspectives, Faina exists in uncertainty in the first half of the novel, suspended between fantasy and reality.

But the narrative dispels that pixie dust to reveal Faina for what she is: a scrappy, resourceful, plucky, and determined orphan who learns against all odds to thrive in an inhospitable wilderness. The true dimensions of Faina’s heroism are left for the reader to imagine: day after day, long night after long night, the child finds a way to live off the land.

In this, Faina is a triumph of the indominable human spirit. Raised by an alcoholic father and left to her own devices when she was only 11, she finds trust difficult; she does not understand friendship and views the vulnerability that love demands as a weakness. That she learns this is not the case, that she gives herself so completely to Mabel and Jack and then to Garrett and ultimately to Jay, measures her own growth as a character.

In the end, however, Faina must be true to herself. The decision to leave her family is not easy—to stay, however, would be her death. It is this commitment to self-preservation that makes our response to Faina complicated. She is as selfish as she is loving, as vulnerable as she is strong, and as needful as she is independent.

As Garrett Benson grows into manhood and into fatherhood, he emerges as a counterforce to Faina. Like Faina, he is resourceful in the wilds; like Faina, he hesitates to bond with people, preferring the spacious solitude of the woods and the company of animals and birds; like Faina, he is both strong and independent; and like Faina, he has an internal moral compass, an unerring sense of right and wrong. When Mabel mentions that she will lend Garrett her tattered copy of Thoreau’s Walden, we seen how Garrett, with his stunning sense of oneness with nature, his taciturn disposition, and his disdain over interactions with people, embodies the ideals of the transcendental hero.

And unlike Faina, but like Thoreau’s Narrator, Garrett learns to adapt to community. Unlike Faina, he balances independence and commitment. After some hesitation, he embraces his long-term agreement to help Jack keep his farm operating. Because of his love for Faina, he learns to accept the domestic life and embrace the chance to (literally) build a home for his wife and child. Even as Faina opts for freedom, Garret embraces the responsibilities of father and provider, balancing the call of the wild (Mabel lends him her copy of the Jack London novel) with the rewards of domesticity.