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woman who must live with the consequences of the terrible choices she has made; and a detective whose cleverness is superseded only by his sense of justice.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

This is my favourite of Shreve's novels, I loved the way it kept me guessing as to what would happen...would Nicky get the big sister she wanted.....& what would become of Baby Doris.

A really engrossing story, with a final chapter that bought a lump to my throat...(sniff!)

Added to the free bookshelf

Released as part of the CHRISTMAS IN JULY Challenge (#20)





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