WHITER THAN SNOW

In 1920s Swandyke, Colorado, nine children on their way home from school are trapped in a deadly avalanche. From the outset, author Sandra Dallas teases listeners with the fact that only four survive. But which four? The novel then leaves the kids in the snow and flashes back, developing connections between the principal players and their relationships to one another and the trapped children. Narrator Ali Ahn does an adequate job portraying the East Coast transplants and the Colorado mining types, but her ethnic characters—the black sharecroppers, the Eastern European immigrant family—are lacking in credibility. Listeners will feel manipulated by predictable plotting, awkward dialogue, and unconvincing characters. Thornton Wilder’s THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY does it better, without the melodrama. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2010]