The House of Frozen Dreams
Set in the stunning, eerie Alaskan mountains, this is a love story you will never forget.Step into the home that lay empty for decades…After a family tragedy, the old Alaskan homestead lay abandoned for two decades, until the one person who need it most came looking. What Kache found was more than a house full of old memories and buried secrets: he found Nadia, who had been hiding from the world, unseen, for ten years.Held captive by a past too painful or too dangerous to face, they must now break free from what binds them in place – and face the ghosts that have never stopped haunting them.Step into the house of frozen dreams…
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2015
Copyright © Seré Prince Halverson 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover photographs © Irene Lamprakou/Trevillon Images (girl); Plainpicture/Pictorium (window)
Seré Prince Halverson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007438945
Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780007438952
Version: 2014-10-29
For Daniel, Michael, Karli and Taylor
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Part One: Breakup 2005
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Part Two: Land of the Midnight Sun and the Prodigal Son 2005
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Part Three: The Fall 2005
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Part Four: Winter Tracks 2005–2006
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Part Five: Breakup 2006
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Acknowledgements
Q&A with Seré Prince Halverson
About the Author
Also by Author
About the Publisher
This: her nightly ritual. She took the knife from the shelf to carve a single line in the log-planked stairwell that led from the kitchen to the root cellar. She’d carved them in groups of four one-inch vertical lines bisected with a horizontal line. So many of them now, covering most of the wall. They might be seen as clusters of crosses, but to her they were not reminders of death and sacrifice but evidence of her own existence.
There were other left-behind carvings too, in the doorjamb on the landing at the top of the stairs. These notches marked the heights of growing children, two in the Forties and Fifties, and two in the Seventies and Eighties, one of whom had grown quite tall. She saw the mother standing on a footstool, trying to reach the top of her son’s head to first mark the wood with pencil, while he stood on tiptoes, trying to appear even taller. She almost heard their teasing, their laughing. Almost.
Six stairs down, she dug the tip of the knife into the wall. The nightly ritual was important. While she no longer lived according to endless rules and regulations, with all those objects and gestures and chants, she did not want her days flowing like water with no end or beginning; shapeless, unmarked. So she read every night, book after book, first in the order that they lined the shelves, turning them upside down when she finished reading and then right-side up for the second read and so forth, now returning to her favorites again and again. And during the day she did chores—foraging, launching and checking fishing nets, setting and checking traps, gardening, tending house, feeding chickens and goats, canning and brining and smoking—all in a certain order, varying only according to the needs of the season. Her days always began with a cold-nose nudge from the dog and not one, but two enthusiastic licks of her hand as if to say not just good morning, but Good Morning! Good Morning!
