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Gerda 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.
Source: Cynthia Ward, Amazon.com.
In this reworking of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, the magical worlds of Saami shamanism and the Kalevala coexist with the polite Victorian society of nineteenth-century Scandinavia. At a time when traditional faith is challenged by modern science, the old pagan gods still haunt the northern forests. One of the novel's two heroines, Ritva, lives in this forest with her Saami shaman mother and robber-baron father until a cultured Danish teenager named Gerda is captured and brought to their camp. Gerda has embarked on a dangerous quest to rescue her friend Kai from the Snow Queen, an evil enchantress whose wintery palace lies far to the north. Their quest leads each of the young women to a fuller understanding of their possible roles in the world, and the need for each to find their individual futures on their own terms. Kernaghan blends fantasy and historical realism to create an enchanting, provocative story that will inspire readers of all ages.
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