Amazon.comGerda is a sheltered daughter of Victorian-era Denmark's middle class; Ritva is the savage daughter of a Lapp shaman and a Swedish bandit chief. Christian and pagan, city girl and wildwood outlaw, their paths should never have crossed. But Lady Aurore, a mysterious noblewoman, bears away Gerda's beloved, Kai, and Gerda steals away from home to rescue him, though she knows she has little hope of success. Even that slim hope is dashed, it seems, when she is captured by the robber-maiden Ritva. Yet they will find themselves traveling together beyond the Cave of the North Wind, to the end of the earth--and the Snow Queen's perilous palace.
In The Snow Queen, Eileen Kernaghan has respectfully combined elements of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale with Saami shamanic lore and the Finnish epic, The Kalevala, to create a powerful, enchanting, and gracefully written novel with intelligent, well-drawn characters and with unexpected plot turns that will surprise you right up to the end. --Cynthia Ward
