It's November 2004. Barrett Meeks, having lost love yet again, is suddenly and inexplicably inspired to look up at the sky, where he sees a pale light that seems to regard him in a distinctly godlike way. At the same time, Beth, who's engaged to Barrett's older brother, Tyler, is dying of colon cancer. Tyler, a struggling musician with a drug problem, is trying and failing to write a wedding song for his wife-to-be. THE SNOW QUEEN, beautiful and heartbreaking, comic and tragic, proves once again that Cunningham is one of the great novelists of this generation.