Emerging from a place of beauty, awe, and danger, The Snow Forest is the dramatic and inspiring story of a family who escapes the threats of early 20th century Russia for a life of extreme, untouched wilderness. Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert brings her formidable storytelling talents to the magnificent, magical extremes of the Siberian taiga and considers: how permeable is the border between humanity and nature?

In a remote, high-altitude corner of Siberia, a lone family of religious Russian fundamentalists has lived isolated and undetected for forty-four years. Since retreating in the 1930s from the dangers and comforts of the world, the parents and children have scrounged off the cold and unforgiving land, having no contact with any humans except each other. Untethered from human progress, unaware even of the events of WWII, their knowledge and beliefs have remained frozen in time, their lives devoted wholly to their faith and the hard work of survival. But their discovery in 1980 by a team of Soviet geologists will change all of that. One unlikely woman--a scholar and linguist who has spent her life in a different kind of hiding--is sent to the family's mountaintop to bridge the chasm between modern existence and their ancient, snow forest life. What she uncovers in that dangerous and beautiful wilderness will be stranger and more miraculous than anything she had ever expected, and will upturn her own quiet life forever.