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. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

February 15, 2010
In this stilted, disjointed smalltown disaster drama, a 1920 Colorado avalanche traps nine children in a snow drift, turning their close-knit community upside-down in the process. As the children's families learn of their predicament, the complicated backstories that bind the members of sleepy Swandyke come to light; in the present, the developing tragedy, including multiple deaths, transforms the community through sorrow, forgiveness, and redemption. Unfortunately, novelist Dallas (Prayers for Sale
) isn't up to the challenge of multiple plot threads, a large cast of characters, or the heavily loaded children-in-distress material; exaggerated caricature, stiff dialogue, and poorly integrated character history make for awkward, disappointing melodrama.