LIGHT ON SNOW by Anita Shreve
Format: Paperback, 336pp
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Anita Shreve explores the world through a sepia-toned light in her gorgeously written and perfectly described novels. In LIGHT ON SNOW, 12-year old Nicky and her widowed father discover an abandoned baby on a routine walk through the idyllic New Hampshire woods. Nicky is still recovering from the tragic loss of her mother and baby sister a few years earlier. The baby and her young mother provide Nicky and her father Robert the outlet for which to experience grief, forgiveness and the undeniable power of love. This story is told by Nicky, 18 years in the future but with the use of present tense to pull the reader into the moment when her world came crumbling down around her and was rebuilt with the strength and optimism that only a child can bring. Shreve writes with such simple and beautiful prose that reading her work is like giving yourself over to new eyes with which to regard the world.
