The Snow Dragon: Three Variations

S.P. Somtow’s much anthologized story The Fallen Country, and the acclaimed young adult novel that derived from it, have been favorites since the 1980s when they first appeared. In 2015, wearing his other hat as one of the leading contemporary opera composers, Somtow premiered his opera The Snow Dragon, a third variation on this theme, taking the characters into a whole new dimension. This volume collects all three variants - short story, novel, and opera libretto, to form a fascinating study in the evolution of a writer’s mind over a thirty-five year period. The Snow Dragon is the story of Billy, a twelve-year-old boy who suffers from such traumatic domestic violence that he has sought refuge in a fantasy kingdom. The Fallen Country has princesses and dragons, but it is a land of perpetual cold, and its inhabitants have no feelings. Billy meets Dora, an embittered therapist with issues of her own. To find an avenue of healing, Billy must convince Dora he is not imagining things … that the place he goes to is a real place. And Dora must learn to abandon her safety net and follow her young patient into another world.