Haunted by the loss of her parents and twin sister at sea, Henna cloisters herself in a Northeastern village where the snow never stops. When she discovers the body of a young woman at the edge of the forest, she's plunged into the mystery of a centuries-old letter regarding one of the most famous stories of Arctic exploration--the Franklin expedition, which disappeared into the ice in 1845. At the center of the mystery is Franklin's wife, the indomitable Lady Jane.
Henna's investigation draws her into a gothic landscape of locked towers, dream-like nights of snow and ice, and a crumbling mansion rife with hidden passageways and carrion birds. But it soon becomes clear that someone is watching her--someone who is determined to prevent the truth from coming out. Suspenseful and atmospheric, The Snow Collectors sketches the ghosts of Victorian exploration against the eerie beauty of a world on the edge of environmental collapse.
About the Author
Tina May Hall lives and teaches in upstate New York. Her collection of stories, The Physics of Imaginary Objects, won the 2010 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. She is the recipient of an NEA grant, and her stories have appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Collagist, Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, Wigleaf, and other journals.
Industry Reviews
"Intoxicating...the dreamy Gothic atmosphere is redolent of candlelight and incense, marked by damask decorations and houses ablaze against the snow. Its brutality tempered by its lovely phraseology, The Snow Collectors is an unusual mystery whose quirks are worth giving in to."
-Foreword Reviews (starred)
"A deliciously creepy atmosphere...An inventive premise, lush imagery, and shameful historical secret."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Hall seamlessly weaves dreamlike imagery with descriptions of police procedure and scientific inquiry ... This elegant account of a woman's confrontation with a cover-up delivers historical intrigue and emotional depth."
-Publishers Weekly
"Hall is nothing short of a conjurer and this story of intrigue is her spell. ... A befitting read on a night of troubled weather, where you're safe inside but trapped in the same labyrinth of cruelty and deception as The Snow Collectors."
-Fangoria
"Ms. Hall is my favorite kind of writer, a born poet who turns to prose and imbues that rather proletarian form with the grace and lightness of verse."
-Wall Street Journal
"Hall has written a lovely, lush, surrealist book...atmospheric, compelling, and beautiful, infused with gentle, earthy fantasy and a soft push into the future, drawing deeply on the gothic genre. Hall's book is poetic and ghostly, haunting the reader with its intriguing story and its evocative imagery of ice."
-Booklist
"Hall has created a work of storytelling art...Hall pushes and pulls the readers, daring them to follow along."
-Heavy Feather Review
"The Snow Collectors is lush and clever with its prose...Tina May Hall writes with the confidence of a prosaist who knows her novel is damn fun."
-Chicago Review of Books
"The prose is lyrical but measured, evocative but never florid....The Snow Collectors is a surprising blend of genres. Mystery, of course, but of a definitive literary bent. The aforementioned traditional Gothic elements are also woven throughout, but with heavy intent, and Hall's exploration of grief speaks authentically to its particular expressions and emanations."
-The Masters Review
"Hall is a poet as well as a prose writer and this is certainly evident throughout The Snow Collectors. It's a novel rife with turns of phrase that hit me on a visceral level."
-Untoward Mag
"If Joan Aiken had set out to write Rebecca, The Snow Collectors might have been the result. An orphaned woman discovers a body and pushes her way into a concatenation of events that at first seems to offer her love but soon curves toward her own destruction. Dark and eccentric, quirky in all the right ways, and beautifully written, this is the story of someone who, like so many of us, keeps trying to unravel a mystery well past the moment when she knows she should stop."
-Brian Evenson, author of Last Days
"Tina May Hall's magnificent heroine Henna-an ingenious cross between Nancy Drew, a Charlotte Bronte character, and a cynical Gen-Xer-is the best thing that's going to happen to you this year. This novel, which is a tale of love and longing, fear and grief, is also a deep meditation on snow and the power of water to both ravage and save us. I loved every page. The tiny Antarctic flash chapters and the longer, snowed-in rural Northern New York chapters twine together to produce an exquisite rope of tension. Hall's language is crisp and fresh and wholly authentic as it pulls you through both the 19th and 21st centuries. This book shimmers like an icicle in the seeping dusk."
-Sherrie Flick, author of Thank Your Lucky Stars
"The Snow Collectors is a wonder of a book, and Tina May Hall is a wonder of a writer. In lyrical, precise prose, Hall draws us into the snow-globed labyrinth of a dead body and the ghosts of a nineteenth-century expedition within a novel that is equal parts mystery, gothic fiction, and experimental innovation. Hall's work occupies the liminal space between poetry and prose, and this novel is an atmospheric marvel that is both ethereal and impossible to put down."
-Anne Valente, author of Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down
"Eerie, atmospheric, and unexpected-this gorgeously written book grips hold of you from the first page and doesn't let go."
-Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire
"At first, The Snow Collectors seems all subtle piecework, every sentence exquisite, combining icy clarity with sensual surprise. Yet in no time the novel reveals more, the stains and strains of our human messes. Altogether, it proves a miraculous amalgam: a grief narrative, a Gothic romance, a cold-case mystery, and a tale of climate catastrophe. I came away ravished."
-John Domini, author of MOVIEOLA! and The Color Inside a Melon
