After Nicky loses her mother and baby sister in a tragic automobile accident, she and her father move to an isolated community in New Hampshire. He gives up his career as an architect and begins to make Shaker-style wooden furniture for a living. His grief practically paralyzed him and he has withdrawn into himself. More and more Nicky must be the adult one in the remaining family.
One day after school Nicky and her father went for a walk through the snowy woods on their property. Nicky thinks that she hears a baby crying but finds that implausible until suddenly her father hears the same thing. They trek toward the sound on their snowshoes and all at once see a 'light on snow' which turns out to be a newborn baby wrapped in a bloody towel and slipped inside a sleeping bag. Nicky's father scoops up the freezing baby and they hurriedly get back to the house and into their truck and head out over the icy roads to the hospital.
Nicky wants to keep the baby and has trouble understanding when her father says no, that they must get it to the hospital and let the authorities take care of matters.
Soon a bedraggled young woman shows up at their house pretending to be shopping for furniture for her parents' Christmas gift. But Nicky and her father both figure out that the girl has seen the papers and found out that this family is the one that found her baby. The girl has not yet recovered from the birth and does not have the strength to leave so they take her in 'just until she is fit' to go.
The characters in this story are interesting and I can see how someone in both Nicky and her father's situation might react as they did...........up until they took the birth mother in. But the book was interesting and Anita Shreve always spins a good tale.
One day after school Nicky and her father went for a walk through the snowy woods on their property. Nicky thinks that she hears a baby crying but finds that implausible until suddenly her father hears the same thing. They trek toward the sound on their snowshoes and all at once see a 'light on snow' which turns out to be a newborn baby wrapped in a bloody towel and slipped inside a sleeping bag. Nicky's father scoops up the freezing baby and they hurriedly get back to the house and into their truck and head out over the icy roads to the hospital.
Nicky wants to keep the baby and has trouble understanding when her father says no, that they must get it to the hospital and let the authorities take care of matters.
Soon a bedraggled young woman shows up at their house pretending to be shopping for furniture for her parents' Christmas gift. But Nicky and her father both figure out that the girl has seen the papers and found out that this family is the one that found her baby. The girl has not yet recovered from the birth and does not have the strength to leave so they take her in 'just until she is fit' to go.
The characters in this story are interesting and I can see how someone in both Nicky and her father's situation might react as they did...........up until they took the birth mother in. But the book was interesting and Anita Shreve always spins a good tale.
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