When Eli was a little girl, her mother took her out onto the glacier near her Norwegian home, whistled to the Northern Lights, and disappeared. Search parties never found any trace of her. Her father even lost a few fingers to frostbite in his search efforts, but Eli's mother was just gone.
Now Eli is sixteen and living in Cape Cod with her father who is continuing his work as a marine biologist in Massachusetts. She loves her father and her best friend, but she's been aching for her mother all this time. The stories her mother told her about the North Wind and three treacherous princesses are always with her. When she hears the Northern Lights will be visible in Cape Cod for one night only, she knows she has to take a chance. To her surprise, it seems to work, and a cold and wispy version of her mother returns.
Eli knows she has to keep her mother's return a secret, but then strange things start happening like a group of narwhals showing up in Cape Cod and meteorites falling in her front yard. When her mother disappears again, Eli finds a note telling her to she will find her mother in the place she last saw her. It's time to return to the arctic home she knew as a child and uncover the truth once and for all.
Nicole Lesperance's novel is infused with folklore and magical realism, and it is sometimes difficult to know what is real. The histories of mother daughter relationships are told through these fairy tales as well the mental health struggles of Eli's mother and grandmother. This book is beautifully written, but it was a stressful read for more as Eli continues to make more and more dangerous decisions as the book progresses. The language is beautiful even if the story and the folklore are dangerous. Recommended.
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