“The Ice Widow” by Anne M. Smith-Nochasak

“Humans are the ones who construct love with walls around it”

Anna Caine has been building walls all her life. And the highest fence she has constructed is the one around her heart. Once she gave her heart away, she didn’t let anyone make even the tiniest crack in the wall she’d built around it.

Reading “The Ice Widow: A Story of Love and Redemption” by Anne M. Smith-Nochasak felt cathartic to me. As I dived deeper into the story, it became clearer that I could have been Anna Caine.

Our fates depend on the circumstance in the same measure as they depend on our own will and determination. A woman can be strong and persistent in her attempts not to succumb to a love story not meant to have a happy ending, but she cannot completely overrule fate. If fate – or circumstances if you prefer to keep away from the mythical – doesn’t let her meet a man who is better than the hero of her doomed-to-failure love story, there is little she can do not to turn into Anna Caine.

Who is Anna Caine? To me, she is a collective figure, an embodiment of all the women who experienced deep love but couldn’t fulfil it. I’ve met such women in real life, and surprisingly, most of them have succeeded in building a decent life for themselves in terms of professional fulfilment and earning a decent living to lead a comfortable life. I know a woman with a tragically romantic story in her past that involved an extreme sports enthusiast who died pursuing his hobby. The man was married. A pure family bliss with kids and homecooked dinners was never on the agenda for the lovers. Still, the woman never married after her romantic hero died. She says no man she met afterward was even remotely like him. She, though, didn’t spend her life, fading away quietly remembering rare nights of passion. She earned a decent retirement, dresses elegantly, travels around the world, and doesn’t look like someone who regrets their life choices.

It isn’t so light and airy for Anna Caine.  Having raised the son of the man with whom she wasn’t meant to be, she stayed connected with her love. And that, in my opinion, didn’t let her ever break the ties, which to some may seem feeble, but in reality, are as strong as legally binding contracts. You can’t pursue them, but it is also impossible to break them.

While reading, I was wondering, what if Joshua had turned out “an ordinary man” who leaves their children when he leaves a woman he had a relationship with. The fact that he didn’t do it, without a doubt, makes him a decent man. Still, at the same time, it makes him the one who ruined Anna’s life, having bound her by his regular presence in her life.

Anna Caine couldn’t love mousy but kind and intelligent Terrence after she experienced loving expressive and full of rugged vitality but engaged to another Joshua. Anna’s biggest misfortune was that after she had finished the relationships with both she didn’t meet a “Terrence/Joshua” hybrid whom she could love without restraints, knowing that he loved her. Love alone couldn’t have torn her apart from the vision she had of Joshua. She didn’t see him clearly simply because it is impossible to see a human being as they truly are if you’ve had only short encounters with them. Leah, Joshua’s wife, who was strong enough not to give up on her love because of Anna, was the one who knew him. Maybe that is why she didn’t object to his communication with his and Anna’s son.

I could write a book about the thoughts and emotions Anna’s story in “The Ice Widow” has evoked, but a review probably isn’t a proper place to do so. It feels important to add, though, that the author draws an incredibly vivid picture of the Inuit culture. Not for the first time, reading about the struggles of the native population during the times of dramatic changes people from other places bring together with their arrival to new lands made me think how versatile and at the same time, disappointingly repetitive the behaviour of people throughout history is. I did some research after stumbling upon the term “residential school” in the book. It was clear what purpose these institutions had from the context provided, but I felt the need to know more. Again, the conclusion I’ve come to after I read about the residential schools system in Canada, put a damper on my optimism that people are capable of learning from their mistakes. I realise that the system was abolished – not so long ago, though – but what makes me sad is that I see the pattern repeating in other places and with other nations involved. It doesn’t cease to upset me that the slogans ‘you can’t compare these things’ and ‘this is something completely different’ have tamed us into accepting whatever is being told to us by ‘authoritative sources’.

Since it is already impossible to make this long story – review – short, I’d like to add that “The Ice Widow” is a multi-layered portrayal of the path we take in life. Just like people in real life, fictional characters in this story don’t always make it right. They stumble and fall. They see and do indecent, ugly things. They suffer. And they die. But also, like every one of us, if they don’t drive themselves down the precipice, they continue looking for an anchor. And for some, the sun rays sneaking through between the branches of the tree tops show them the way. Not necessarily to a perfect happily-ever-after with all the ingredients served neatly on a plate. But always to a sanctuary, designed especially for them. Simply because they have carved its walls themselves – by living.