East

Rose is the youngest of a large family, born on a day that makes her superstitious mother fear the worst: she is "north-born," and family lore holds that north-born children are restless wanderers fated for early, icy deaths. When an enormous white bear appears at the family's door and offers health and prosperity in exchange for Rose, she agrees to go with it, traveling on its back to a distant castle carved into a mountainside.

Each night a stranger joins her in the dark, gone before dawn. When Rose breaks a promise not to look at him, she learns he is a man trapped in bear form by a curse laid on him by a troll queen — and her curiosity costs her the chance to free him herself.

Determined to set things right, Rose sets out on a journey to a kingdom that lies east of the sun and west of the moon, aided along the way by her own family, a French merchant family, a trio of Scandinavian sailors, and an Inuit community, each teaching her a skill — mapmaking, sailing, hunting — she will need to survive the journey and confront the troll queen.

Edith Pattou's novel draws on the Norwegian fairy tale of the same underlying story (also the source for "Beauty and the Beast" variants) and is narrated in rotating first-person voices, including Rose's, her family's, and the bear's.