Finished: The Snow Child (Ivey). A lovely, rather spell-binding book, about a couple, Mabel and Jack, who cannot have children, so they move away from their families and up to the harsh wilderness of Alaska to make a go of it, just the two of them. When they create a snow girl, complete with red hat and mittens, their lives change forever. They are just into their 50's when they move to Alaska, barely making ends meet, trying to scrape out a living by farming. They are still grieving the loss of Mabel's only pregnancy, a stillborn baby in the late term. They stick to themselves and don't wish to meet or rely on neighbors, going into town only for groceries and other supplies. Life has become monotonous and hard, with very little joy. One night, during a heavy snow, Jack and Mabel suddenly get unusually playful and start having a snowball fight! Mabel then insists they build a snowman, and like giddy children, they do. With the addition of some red hat and mittens, they decide to make it a snow girl, and Jack intricately carves a lovely face. The next morning, the snow girls is just a pile of snow, but the red mittens and hat are gone. Soon after, both Jack and Mabel keep seeing a snippet of a girl in a blue coat, red hat and mittens, and white-blonde hair dashing in and out of the woods with a red fox always at her side. They worry that this child is alone in the wilderness, and wonder if they are imagining her. About this time, they meet their closest neighbors in town, the Bensons. George, the father, insists on bringing his sons and helping Jack get his fields done, as Jack is struggling and about to go under. Then he introduces them to his wife, Esther, a whirlwind of a person, and suddenly, Mabel and Jack have good friends that they never expected to or wanted to have. It was so nice reading a story where there were actually people who grew fond of each other, and helped each other with genuine concern and compassion with no ulterior motives! Still, most of Jack and Mabel's time is spent thinking of the little girl who appears at random times. Finally, one day, she comes closer and even comes into the house for a meal with them. It takes a long time, but she comes to trust them, but always runs out and back to the woods by nightfall. Her name is Faina. Mabel thinks back to a storybook her father used to read her about a Russian couple who couldn't have children, but created a girl out of snow who became real. She begins to think that Faina must be more than human, as she has a deep need for the cold and outside. When Faina tells them goodbye as the spring thaw arrives, they are devastated. They think they'll never see her again, but she comes back year after year once the snow arrives. She becomes the daughter they never had and she grows to love them just as much. When she is 16 she meets the Benson's youngest son, Garrett, who is passionate about living off the land, trapping and hunting, and they seem to be soul mates. They fall for each other immediately, much to the dismay of Jack, who doesn't like to think of the hours alone they spend out in the wilderness. Mabel can see that they are in love. Sure enough, Faina becomes pregnant with Garrett's child, and they marry and settle into a cabin built by Jack and Garrett. They all worry that Faina will never be able to stay put and have a "normal" lifestyle, caring for her child. Faina gives birth to a healthy baby boy, but her own health deteriorates.  She loves the baby fiercely, as she does Garrett, but she has a high fever and begs to be taken outside to the cold. Garrett fashions her a bed outside, and in the middle of the night, Faina disappears, leaving just her marriage quilt and her bed clothes on the ground. Mabel and Jack grieve the loss of another child, but Garrett searches and searches for her throughout the woods. They all know in their hearts that she is truly gone, though. A few years later, Mabel and Jack are still there, helping Garret to raise Little Jack, along with the Bensons who delight in their share of grandparenting. A finalist for the Pulitzer, The Snow Child is a lovely story, beautifully written, but heartbreaking at the end with the loss of Faina. However, you never really feel like she's far away. :-)

Finished: Laughing Boy (La Farge) Pulitzer Prize winner of 1930 about a pair of Navajo teens, Laughing Boy and Slim Girl, who meet, fall in love, and marry against the wishes of Laughing Boy's family. Slim Girl had been taken from her home as a young girl, after her parents died, and sent to an American school. When sent to work for a preacher's family, she ended up becoming a prostitute when the only people who would care for her when she became pregnant by an American who deserted her were the "working girls". She eventually meets another American who becomes enamored of her and returns to the town again and again, lavishing her with money if she'll be his alone. He wouldn't ever think of marrying her though. When Slim Girl travels to a traditional Navajo dance, which takes place over several days, she meets Laughing Boy. They are instantly drawn to each other, and Laughing Boy asks his uncle for permission to marry Slim Girl. (Interestingly, it was tradition for the family of the boy's mother to make the decision, while his own father just had to go along with whatever was decided.) The uncle, having heard rumors about Slim Girl, first that she'd been "Americanized" and second that she had a certain way of making money, emphatically declared no. In defiance of his family, Laughing Boy returned with Slim Girl to her town, where she had a house on the outskirts. She made up an excuse as to why he could never set foot in the town, and pretended to still go into town to work for the preacher's wife, while she continued to see the American. She loved Laughing Boy, but she wanted to also set them up with a good life so they could go back to his home and live the Navajo way, but start off comfortably. Laughing Boy was a talented silversmith, creating bridles, bow guards, jewelry etc., while Slim Girl learned to weave nice blankets. They were together for a year and a half, traveling back to Laughing Boy's home for a visit, with almost everyone accepting Slim Girl...except his uncle. Eventually Laughing Boy finds out about the American and vows to leave Slim Girl. But then, she tells him her entire story and how she was deserted by everyone but the prostitutes and how she came to live the life she did. She tells Laughing Boy that she loves him and him alone and that she'll leave with him right now to go make their home near his family. Laughing Boy forgives her, and they set out with most of their belongings, to go and live among their own people. Tragically, Slim Girl is killed by the gunfire of a jealous Native American man, Red Man, as they travel home. Set in 1915, Laughing Boy was billed as the "greatest Indian love story of all time". I don't know if that's true, but it did keep me reading, and I'm glad I finally read the story. :-)

Finished: The Overstory (Powers) Pulitzer Prize winner of 2019. A very good book, delving into several characters you get to know very well and their lifelong relationships to trees, and some, to each other. It's more than that, though. I just spent a month reading it because it's definitely not a page-turner, but a read-a-bit-at-a-time-and-absorb-it. So, I'm not going to recap it....but just copy here the description of the book from Amazon. It's pretty succinct and describes the book fairly well. The characters...you'll just have to read and get to know for yourselves. :-)

The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of―and paean to―the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours―vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.