‘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woman who must live with the consequences of the terrible choices she has made; and a detective whose cleverness is superseded only by his sense of justice.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.

Reviews

• ‘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)

Hardback

Published 07/10/2004