Eowyn Ivey’s debut novel, The Snow Child, is the stuff of folktale: a childless and struggling couple in 1920s Alaska build a little snowman, only to later find in its place a one-way trail of departing footprints and a blond-haired girl disappearing through the woods in the snow creation’s mittens and scarf. When a young girl later appears on the couple’s doorstep — apparently lost and alone in this inhospitable world — the reader is drawn into an evocative confusion of reality and desire.