Treasures of the Snow, by Patricia St. John

I hope many of you don't remember how I vowed at the beginning of 2012 not to purchase any books this year. (The Great Smoke Out changed that vow, considerably, mostly because I was replacing books from our home collection. Though I may have added one or two new ones as well. Ahem.) At any rate, after taking said vow, my sister-in-law, quite by surprise, mailed me a copy of Treasures of the Snow which she had mentioned as being one of her childhood favorites. I set this book down on the staircase to take it upstairs with me at some point and that is where it sat when it was exposed to a fantastic amount of smoke. Off it went to the cleaners where it remained for several months. It was returned cleaned. (Miraculously, really - considering it's location. Several books from that stack bit the dust.)

Now, apparently you have to be careful about which edition of this book you pick up. A fairly new version was released, abridged. You want to find a copy from 1980 or earlier. Treasures of the Snow was first published in 1950. (Subsequently, it was turned into a film which I am now very curious to see.) It was written by Patricia St. John who was born in 1919, the third of five children. Her parents had been missionaries for a time (although Patricia was born after they had returned to their home in England). When Patricia grew up, she also became a missionary, serving in Morocco. She never married, but worked alongside her brother. She died in 1993 due to heart problems.

St. John set the story Treasures of the Snow in a small town in Switzerland. She and her family had lived in Switzerland for a short time during her growing up years and she had fond enough memories of it to want to write a story involving the area. Although this isn't necessarily a Christmas story (I was not reading it because of the season we're currently in, but because I was looking for a pleasant read one afternoon and I suspected this would do well) I'm going to label it a "Christmas read" as many of the major events which happen in this book happen at Christmastime.

All told, Treasures of the Snow is a story about friendship and forgiveness. (What did I tell you the other day about running into the topic of forgiveness every which way I look?!) The book opens with an introduction to the main character - Annette (shout out!) - who is off attending the village's Christmas celebration with people from the neighboring chalet. Upon her return home she discovers that her mother has given birth to her Christmas present - a baby brother. Due to complications from the birth, her mother dies and Annette is left to play the mother figure to her brother, Dani. The antagonist in the plot is the boy from the neighboring chalet, who goes by the name Lucien. (By the way, I'm going to use the word "chalet" as many times as I can in this review.) Lucien is the neighborhood bully and one day he takes his bullying too far. As a result of his misbehavior, Dani meets with a terrible accident and Annette vows to hate Lucien for the rest of her life. (She also hopes he'll come to hate his life too.)

The book deals with the topic of Annette's anger and bitterness towards Lucien. It also deals with Lucien's feelings as he discovers that actions can have disastrous consequences. They both have to learn that in order for Jesus to be King of their Hearts there is no place for anger, bitterness, fear, or a lack of forgiveness. It's a very simple picture for children and adults to understand and basic and straightforward in its presentation. However, despite the simplicity of the message, I still found that the way St. John explained this message, using this story to illustrate the teaching, to be relaxed and pleasant. In other words, it didn't strike me as being Elsie Disnmore-ish. (I really dislike Elsie.) (I also don't think the message of forgiveness to be a "simple one" seeing that it's so hard for humans to do.)

This book is 220 pages long (at least, my copy is!) and contains short chapters. I think it would work well for children ages 8 on up. I definitely plan on holding it back a bit before I introduce our kids to it. When they are old enough, I will be glad to read it with them because 1. I like the story and 2. it has family history attached to it. Also, I have to say I might have liked it just on the basis of the main character's name being Annette. Every time I read her name, I smiled. (You don't run into too many Annette's these days!) Besides my blogger friend, that is also my mother's middle name.

Do expect this book to be preachy, but not unbearable. Having never been to Switzerland, I can't attest to St. John's descriptions. However, she used the words "Christmas", "snow" and "chalet" enough that I enjoyed the setting thoroughly and would now like to go and visit sometime.

Thank you, Caryn, for the gift of this story!

* Bloggy family history: Caryn posted a review here of Uncle Tom's Cabin back in 2007. I've linked to it for old times' sake.