Elise was an east-born, and Eugenia was set to have a replacement child who would also be east-born, but Rose’s birth proves otherwise and ends up being a north-born. Rose’s birth was to make up for her older sister, Elise, who passed away. The skjebne-soke claimed if Eugenia gave birth to any children while she was facing North, that child would die a cold and terrible death, buried under ice and snow. Eugenia wanted to have seven children to meet all the points of a compass, except for the direction of North, due to a prediction that was given to her by a skjebne-soke, or fortune-teller. Her mother, Eugenia, is extremely superstitious while her father, Arne, is level-headed and the complete opposite of his wife. Here the story follows Rose, a teenager growing up in the shadow of her brothers and sisters on the edges of the tundra on a farm in Norway. Edith Pattou’s East is a retelling of a Norwegian fairy tale, “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” (In the UK and Australia the novel is titled North Child.) Readers will find similarities to the story of Beauty and the Beast, as well as Cupid and Psyche.
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