Jack and Mabel have recently arrived in Alaska in 1920. Longing for children and struggling in their marriage, they build a child out of snow. The next morning, the snow child is gone --- but they glimpse a small girl running through the trees. As they struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, Jack and Mabel come to love her as their own daughter.

Siblings George and Cecile live in Venice, California, but think of themselves as French ducks. They have an important friend, Polina Panova, who conjures magical dresses of thread, silk and velvet…of grass, pieces of night sky, and strawberry jam. To the ducks, who delight in her daily visits, Polina is a princess. But when Polina's prince --- who makes movies almost as luminous as her dresses --- decides to go away, life on the canal changes, and so does Polina.

In the midst of the deep recession of the early 1980s, English student Madeleine Hanna is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine attempts to align this literary theme with current ideals, she finds herself in a complex love triangle that continues long after graduation.