Returning to a book that shaped my imagination

Every so often I am overcome with the desire to find and reread a book I vaguely remember from my childhood. This generally requires strange web searches. “Ribbon head fell off” easily turned up “The Green Ribbon,” a story by Alvin Schwartz in which—you guessed it—an elderly woman’s head falls off when she finally allows her husband to untie the ribbon that has been snugly looped around her neck since she was a child. (It turns out many children of the ’80s were mildly traumatized by this story.) Locating The Sisters Impossible proved a challenge for years, until I finally found the right combination of details to summon the juvenile novel about a clumsy child and her perfect ballerina sister.

But no book evaded my adult grasp more persistently than the one about the little Swiss girl—no, not Heidi, another little Swiss girl. I remembered a small child injured in a bad accident, an old man who whittled figurines, and a lot about accepting Jesus into your heart. These plot points didn’t coalesce in any particular literary direction. Finally identifying the novel—Treasures of the Snow, published in 1948 by British author Patricia St. John—felt like solving the best kind of riddle. Yet, while I waited for Amazon to deliver a copy, I couldn’t help but contemplate my complicated relationship to this book. Is there a word for nostalgia tinged with trauma?

My first copy of the book was a gift from my childhood best friend. Lara and I had matching eyeglasses and short bobbed haircuts; we looked like Mary Engelbreit drawings come to life. We both loved to read, and we often concocted elaborate make-believe games from the stuff of Baby Island and Hardy Boys mysteries. We were kindred spirits in every way—except religiously. Lara’s family attended a church that was far more evangelical than my own mainline congregation. I wouldn’t be surprised if its members unapologetically identified as fundamentalist.