"A taut, intricately layered page-turner that looks deeply and fearlessly into matters of profound human concern." —Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Winner of the Kate Chopin Award On the day of her father's funeral, twenty-eight-year-old Clarissa Iverton discovers that he wasn't her biological father after all. Her mother disappeared fourteen years earlier, and her fiancé has just revealed a life-changing secret to her. Alone and adrift, Clarissa travels to mystical Lapland, where she believes she'll meet her real father. There, at a hotel made of ice, Clarissa is confronted with the truth about her mother's history and must make a decision about how—and where—to live the rest of her life. "Brilliant." — The New York Times Book Review "Vida's terrific new novel is a taut, tense, terse examination of family and identity . . . [with] the grip and pace of a thriller." — Seattle Post-Intelligencer "[A] stirring novel . . . as alive and fascinating as the brilliant atmospheric phenomenon of its title." — Chicago Tribune "Reading this book reminded me . . . how rarely a writer as precise, artful, and passionate as Vendela Vida comes along." — George Saunders, Booker Prize-winning author "[A] tone of dark whimsy suffuses the whole book and accounts for much of its peculiarly biting charm." — The New York Times Book Review "Vida gives the icy landscape an eerie, forbidding beauty and her writing has . . . great emotional acuity." — The New Yorker "A luminescent and evocative tale of grief, free of the standard clichés." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)