Blizzard A Novel

A runaway bestseller about a boy gone missing in the middle of an Alaskan blizzard, and the people desperate to find him—from multi-award-winning author Marie Vingtras.

Winner of the Prix Des Libraires, the French Booksellers’ Prize for Best Novel of the Year

In the middle of a raging storm in Alaska, Bess stops to tie her shoes. And just like that, the boy is lost, gone in a flash, swallowed up by the snow.

Bess is a California girl, while Benedict, with whom she and the boy live, is the last in his family’s long line of rugged Alaskans. Benedict knows better than to venture out in such weather. But he has no choice. He must find Bess and the boy before it’s too late.

Blizzard is a race against death and destiny. Benedict, the local, and Bess, the outsider, are joined in the frantic search by Cole, an unsavory figure who washed up decades ago and clings on, downing moonshine. Then there’s Freeman, a Black Vietnam vet who seems wholly out of place in the North. What brings him to this remote corner of Alaska? What secrets is he hiding—are they all hiding? And will they find the truth? An award-winning page-turner, Blizzard is a breathless panorama of lonely souls making a life for themselves in the Far North, and of the dark truths they carry.

Marie Vingtras was born in Rennes, France, in 1972. Her debut novel, Blizzard, is the winner of twelve literary prizes in France, including the Prix Libr’à Nous, the Prix Talents Cultura, and the Prix des libraires, the French booksellers’ prize for best novel of the year, and has sold more than 100,000 copies in France.

Jeffrey Zuckerman is a translator of French. A graduate of Yale University, he has been a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize, and has been awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant and the French Voices Grand Prize. In 2020 he was named a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.