Joel H. Morris is the author of All Our Yesterdays, his debut novel. He has worked most recently as an English teacher and, for the past twenty years, has taught language and literature. Prior to earning a doctorate in comparative literature, he spent several years as a bookseller before joining a small maritime expedition company as a sailor.
At Electric Lit Morris tagged "seven novels involving literal and metaphorical ghost childrenseven novels involving literal and metaphorical ghost children." One title on the list:
The Snow Child by Eowyn IveyRead about another entry on the list.
Supernatural children have long been a feature of folklore and fairytales. Often a foundling, the child fills a gap in an otherwiseloving couple’s marriage—the ghost space that is yet to be filled. Ivey sets her novel in the wilds of Alaska in the 1920s, with all the challenges of the homesteading life that such a place entails. In the fashion of the Russian fairytale the novel is based on, a childless couple, Jack and Mabel, build a child out of snow. The snow child disappears and in its place a girl named Faina comes each winter to visit. Atmospheric and hopeful, the novel plays with the tension of not knowing whether Faina is real or a delusion that binds Jack and Mabel to one another and to the landscape in which they are trying to survive.
The Snow Child is among Emily Burack's twenty-five of the best classic winter books, Idra Novey's top ten retold fairytales, Ashleigh Bell Pedersen's eight magical novels by women writers and M. A. Kuzniar's eight retellings with a bite of darkness.
--Marshal Zeringue
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