As Simple As Snow

As Simple as Snow, Gregory Galloway’s young adult novel for teen readers, follows an unnamed, high-school-aged narrator who falls in love with a Goth girl, Anna Cayne. The book, a coming-of-age story about love, ghosts, and discovering oneself, comes to its climax after Anna disappears in the middle of winter, leaving clues for the narrator to find her.

The narrator, who describes himself as horribly plain and boring, falls madly in love with Anna Cayne, the new girl in school. She wears dark clothes and make-up, loves riddles and magic tricks, and spends her free time writing obituaries for everyone in the small town where they live. The narrator is confused when interesting, fiery Anna starts pursuing him, questioning her advances, but Anna is sure of what she wants. Soon, the two find a strange, if happy romance together.

Anna introduces the narrator to new music, art, and books, and he falls in love with this new world he would never have discovered without her help. She listens to amazing music, creating mix tapes for him that he listens to in his room when he's not with her. She keeps a notebook with her at all times, in which she writes obituaries for every person in town. The narrator wants to know if she's written his obituary, but she refuses to tell him. Anna teaches the narrator about code cracking and CB radios, which she uses to talk to strangers from far off places in her basement. Anna isn't quick to share much about her past or the reasons for her eccentric behavior; her mystery is part of what draws the narrator to her.



Then, halfway through the novel, Anna disappears. Nobody knows what happened to her. Her dress is found by a hole in the nearby river, but there is no trace of Anna's body. She didn't tell the narrator where she was going, or whether or not the situation was planned – all he knows is that she recently finished her obituaries for everyone in town. The local authorities assume Anna is dead, but the narrator isn't convinced – the scene looks too well-staged, and he knows that Anna has a penchant for disappearances and ghost stories.

The secret begins to slowly reveal itself when the narrator receives clues Anna has left behind for him. He gets a letter and a mixtape frozen inside a cube of ice and has to uncover packages buried in the frozen earth. The narrator soon realizes that Anna has been planning her disappearance for months – she had to, in order to coordinate all her letters and prepare each carefully curated clue. The narrator goes to the art teacher and Anna's only other confidante, Mr. Devon, but he claims not to have any answers about Anna's disappearance. The narrator's parents are troubled by his obsession with this missing girl, but he knows Anna better than anyone else, and he believes that she wants him to look for her.

As the narrator becomes an amateur detective, he begins to trace back their relationship, seeing for the first time how Anna's strange behavior during the months they were together might indicate where she went or why she disappeared. The narrator starts to believe it's possible that something bad happened to Anna to lead her to run away or perhaps that her mysterious past had caught up with her. More than anything, he feels jilted that she didn't tell him more about what is going on, or give him any closure.



Galloway plays his cards close to his chest in this mystery, and the end of the novel leaves readers with many questions about Anna, and about what happened to her by the river. Ultimately, the novel is more about the narrator discovering himself through the tracing of his past with the girl he loves, and as he comes of age, realizing the depths and complexities of the world beyond his own simple, cookie-cutter life, he learns how to love Anna even more.

Gregory Galloway is most noted for this book, which, intended for an adult audience, is incredibly popular among high-school-aged readers. He has also written two other works of fiction – Careful and Other Stories and The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand. In 2006, he won the Alex Awards from the American Library Association for As Simple As Snow. The book, which takes place primarily in the desolate winter months in a town somewhere in the northern part of the U.S., is likely inspired, in part, by Galloway's childhood growing up in a small town in southeastern Iowa. Galloway attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop, graduating with an MFA in both poetry and fiction.