Light On Snow

Description

'I watched my father run forward in his snowshoes the way one sometimes does in dreams, unable to make the legs move fast enough. I ran to the place where he knelt. I looked down into the sleeping bag. A tiny face gazed up at me, the eyes wide despite their many folds. The baby was wrapped in a bloody towel, and its lips were blue.' The events of a December afternoon on which a father and his daughter find an abandoned infant in the snow will forever alter eleven-year-old Nicky Dillon's understanding of the world which she is about to enter and the adults who inhabit it: a father who has taken great pains to remove himself from society in order to put behind him an unthinkable tragedy; a young woman who must live with the consequences of the terrible choices she has made; and a detective whose cleverness is superseded only by his sense of justice. Written from the point of view of thirty-year-old Nicky as she recalls the vivid images of that fateful December, hers is a tale of love and courage, of tragedy and redemption, and of the ways in which the human heart always seeks to heal itself.

Anita Shreve is the author of ten critically acclaimed and bestselling novels, all published in Abacus paperback.

'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 *'This is Shreve at her poised best, and her controlled, crisply understated prose makes her emotive subject all the more affecting' DAILY MAIL * 'In a world teeming with novels which do not live up to their hype, it is a treat to read one whose emotional depth belies its simple- seeming exterior. LIGHT ON SNOW is a gem of a book by the daintiest of storytellers' Max Davidson, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH *'Full of emotional depth, it's not a comfortable read but one that will stay with you a long time' Star Choice, DAILY MIRROR *'Emotionally rich...it's the literary equivalent of a snuggly blanket on a snowy night' MARIE CLAIRE *'Shreve delivers a skilled and very readable book' SUNDAY TRIBUNE (IRELAND).