For all its touches of fantasy, The Snow Child is a meticulously researched historical novel, an account of life in the Alaskan frontier under the bold incentive package of a federal land grant program known as homesteading. To encourage settlement of the wilderness, the government gave settlers large tracts of cheap land; in return these hardy settlers would farm that land, essentially wrestling it from the wilderness under often forbidding circumstances. Indeed, the novel was shortlisted for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, which each year recognizes outstanding novels that depict aspects of American life.

Homesteading here becomes a powerful symbol of isolation, courage, and determination. American frontier literature, including texts by Willa Cather, Jack London, and Laura Ingalls Wilder (each of whom Ivey acknowledged as influences), uses homesteading to suggest self-reliance and grit. Homesteaders are hardy pioneers, the embodiment of American can-do determination, willing to leave civilization, culture, and their families behind to work the land, live off its resources, and make a new life in remote territories. The reasons for pursuing homesteading were varied: some went for the adventure; some in the hopes of wealth; some fled legal entanglements; and some, like Jack and

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