Winter Reading: 'Light on Snow'

Here’s a tender story for your winter reading list: Light on Snow by Anita Shreve. The story opens as a 12-year-old girl and her father tromp through the snow in the woods behind their isolated New Hampshire farmhouse. The two discover an abandoned newborn baby wrapped in a sleeping bag.

We follow the events that unfold over the next two weeks as Nicky and her dad decide what to do about the baby. But the story is much more than that. The discovery of the baby is the catalyst that forces Nicky (who’s on the brink of womanhood) and her dad (a lonely widower) to come to terms with a tragedy from their mutual past and to figure out what their present relationship is going to look like.

The novel is not what I’d call an “adoption-themed” or even a “foster parent-themed” one, but the infant’s discovery and ensuing search for the baby’s birth parents does bring some thought-provoking issues to the surface.

Light on Snow is a lovely book to curl up next to the fireplace with; it was over way before I was ready for it to end.

Anita Shreve also wrote The Pilot’s Wife, Sea Glass, All He Ever Wanted, Eden Close, The Weight of Water, and The Last Time They Met.

This book is available from the Exploring Adoption Bookstore.

For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com.