When his wife was pregnant, James M. Chesbro started having daydreams of seeing a lion in his street, padding toward his house through the snowflakes of a New England storm. He felt more like a son, still grieving over the early loss of his own father, rather than a prepared expectant-dad. In these essays, Chesbro finds himself disoriented and bewildered by fatherhood again and again as he explores the maddening moments that provide occasions for new understandings about our children and us. In James M. Chesbro’s stirring debut, A Lion the Snow, we find a contemporary father’s field guide, a husband’s compendium, and a wife’s glimpse into the turning mind of a spouse in the grounded prose of domestic conflict.