THE SNOW CHILD by Eowyn Ivey

This was a fun book to read as it was really an adult fairy tale.  The story was based on a Russian fairy tale about a girl who was half human and half snowmaiden.  When her family all perished she would visit an aging couple who had moved to Alaska because they could not cope with their sadness over the loss of their only child during childbirth.  Since they longed for a child of their own, they were happy for the visits of the child and wished for her to become their own.  The child would not live with them in their cabin, preferring to live among the trees and wild animals. A neighbor's son came to the couple's farm to help sow and take care of the crops when the man was injured because his horse, scared by a bear,  drug him in the field that he had been working. Over time, the son and the snowmaiden fell in love and she became pregnant.  They married and she had a son.  Shortly thereafter she became ill and was outside because she was running such a high fever but she disappered never to be seen again.  The story ends telling of the relationship the old man and his wife develop with the young child, his father, and his partents.