The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

A really imaginative story! A couple settles in the barren cold of Alaska, trying to ease the pain of losing a child and the realization that their dream of having children will never happen. Mabel and Jack love each other but lose sight of that as Mabel grieves. One evening in a moment of happiness together, they build a snow-child. The next day, the melted snow figure has disappeared -even the mittens and hat. A slight wisp of a girl begins visiting their home, Mabel convinced that this is the snow-child they had built. Faina comes in and out of their lives, on her own terms for many years--away to the mountains in the summer heat, re-appearing in the coldest blizzards. Mabel and Jack forge a strong partnership in the hardships of farming in the Alaskan wilderness, and find Faina to be the child they never had. The ending is strange but not unexpected, but left me with a lot of questions --did she slip away on her own, what about the wolverine, was she dissatisfied with her new life, or really ill?