Single Dads in Non-Fiction and Fiction

It was only coincidental. I read Joseph Luzzi’s In a Dark Wood: A Memoir (2015) and the next in my reading pile was Unconditional: A Novel by Stephen Kogon. Both books, one non-fiction and the other fiction, told the stories of young men suddenly finding themselves single fathers. 

Luzzi is a professor of Italian and teaches at Bard College in New York. In 2007, just as his lecture class was about to begin, he noticed a security guard come into the room. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Two Reviews of "Brookhaven"

One day, I'll figure out how Amazon works. Here are two reviews of Brookhaven, both dated December of 2024 (the month it was published), but which didn't show up until the last week. Still, I thank both reviewers for their kind comments.

From Dec. 26, 2024:

 Immensely Satisfying

A quick admission, I usually have to be drug kicking and screaming to read new novels. So, when this book was placed into my hands, I’m now glad my tantrum was brief and that I settled in to both read and enjoy Brookhaven. The novel is lovely, sad, joyful, redemptive, and all around a thoroughly satisfying example of entertaining storytelling. Without giving away the plot, the author artfully weaves in the awful complexity of the Civil War, along with its immediate aftermath, into the lives of the generations that came after, and all with a most satisfying conclusion.

And from Dec. 31, 2024:

 "Brookhaven" kept me up late wondering what would happen next!

“Brookhaven” is a retrospective novel set amidst the grim realities of the American Civil (and often not-so-civil) War and its aftermath. While Young’s descriptions of the war feel so authentic and in the moment, it is his love story—one of romantic love and, even more, love of a place and its people—that drew me in. Young’s writing is clear and concise, and he weaves together a complicated tale that is engaging, endearing, and enlightening. I don't have a lot of time to read, but the book managed to keep me up late at night wondering what would happen next. I expect it will do the same for many other readers.

Donald Hall and Andrew Motion Write Poetic Memoirs

I’m sure why I first started reading memoirs by major poetic figures, but I recently read two that struck me as particularly significant in the development and history of what we consider contemporary poetry. One was American; the other is a Brit who eventually landed in America. Both knew major figures in poetry in their respective countries and beyond. And both served as poet laureates of their respective countries. 

American Donald Hall (1928-2018) first published a memoir entitled Their Ancient Glittering Eyes in 1992. In 2022, four years after his death, a new updated version entitled Old Poets: Reminiscences & Opinions was produced. It’s not so much a chronological memoir as it is an account of his personal experiences with some of the major figures of 20^thcentury poetry. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

“February,” poem by Helen Hunt Jackson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Masters of Pulp Fiction: The Lee Child Edition – Frank Theodat at Pulp, Pipe, & Poetry.

 

A Diner for David Lynch: Poems in Remembrance of a Master – Ethan McGuire at New Verse Review.

 

Poet Laura: A Concert in the General Store – Sandra Fox Murphy at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poetic Voices: Ian Seed and Stephen Pollock

As I’ve gotten older, things that might have been simply interesting or intriguing, but I didn’t have much time for, have become more significant, sometimes surprisingly so. I “discovered” the importance of art; we now spend considerable vacation and free time at art museums. I read more about art; I buy exhibition catalogs and even read them.  

It’s true as well for family history. As I move, or inch, closer to the end of my life, where I and my parents came from has become more important. I discovered genealogical resources online, constructed charts showing my forebears, and tracked down family stories to see if what my father had passed on from his father was true. It’s how I discovered my great-great-grandmother was a descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of The Courtship of Miles Standish fame (yes, they were real people). And it was how I discovered a treasured memory my father had of his grandfather in the Civil War was, well, mostly fiction (my grandfather may have been a wonderful spinner of tall tales).

 

British poet Ian Seed and American poet Stephen Pollock grapple with some of these same themes of grief, death, and the concerns of older selves.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

On Longevity – poem by Paul Wittenberger.

 

Poetry as a Means of Grace – Jim Orrick at Christ Over All. 

 

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelly – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Lately, when I awake desolate – poem by Laurie Klein at Every Day Poems.

 

“The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats – Rabbit Room Poetry. 

Two Beautiful Lenten Devotionals

The beginning of Lent – Ash Wednesday – falls on Valentine’s Day this year. I’m not sure if there’s a subliminal message there or not, but the Lenten season is soon upon us. And two recently published resources might be, and should be, of some interest.

Women Who Followed Jesus: 40 Devotions on the Journey to Easter (Paraclete Press) by Dandi Daley Mackall may seem primarily for women, but I also found it an intriguing resource for a general audience. For each day of Lent, beginning with Ash Wednesday, Mackall has Bible verses, a fictional story grounded in the verses, and a few questions for reflection and deeper study.

 

The Biblical women included in the entries are Mary Magdalene; Mary, the mother of Jesus; Susanna; Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza; the Samaritan woman at the well; Mary of Bethany; Martha; and Salome, the mother of James and John. Each has multiple entries; Mary Magdalene has the most with 10, followed by Mary the mother of Jesus with eight. 

 

Little is known about several of the women; Susanna, for example has a single reference in the Gospel of Luke and Joanna has only two; both were among the women who had been healed by Jesus, traveled with him and the disciples, and supported his ministry. But there’s enough to make some educated guesses as to their personalities and how they fit into Jesus’s ministry. 

Dandi Daley Mackall

Mackall has published more than 500 books for adults and children. She’s a speaker at writer workshops, conferences, women’s meetings, and young author events. She’s also been interviewed on television, radio, podcasts, and blogs about writing and her books, which have won numerous awards. She lives with her family in Ohio.

 

Paraclete has also published Season of Beauty: A Lent and Easter Treasury of Readings, Poems, and Prayers. It’s illustrated with classic paintings by well-known artists, which by themselves are worth considering as Lent and Easter devotionals. (a personal favorite painting in the book, “The Straight Path” by Nicholas Roerich, is depicted above.) It’s a small (143 pages) but physically beautiful book.

 

The poems and readings have been written by such authors as Louisa May Alcott, Hildegard of Bingen, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Merton, William Cowper, the Psalms, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Christina Rossetti, Julian of Norwich, Luci Shaw, Rainer Maria Rilke, Saint Patrick, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Saint Francis, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Bronte, John Greenleaf Whittier, William Wordsworth, Charles Wesley, and many others.

 

One of the entries is this first-millennium Celtic prayer:

 

You are the peace of all things calm

You are the place to hide from harm

You are the light that shines in the dark

You are the heart’s eternal spark

You are the door that’s open wide

You are the guest who waits inside

You are the stranger at the door

You are the calling of the poor

You are my Lord and with me still

You are my love, keep me from ill

You are the light, the truth, the way

You are my Savior this very day

 

Both books make wonderful resources for the Lenten and Easter season.

 

Top illustration: The Straight Path, watercolor (1912) by Nicholas Roerich; Nizhny Novgorod State Museum of Fine Arts, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

White Noise – poem by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

Out of Egypt: 50 Holy Wells #17 – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

Stories I Read This Christmas

I usually read some Christmas-related stories during December. Sometimes it’s to help feel the season; sometimes simply to see how others are writing about Christmas. One year I focused on Christmas romance novellas, and I must have read 20 of them. 

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is an old standby. Last year, I read the TS Poetry edition of the 1843 work, introduced by Megan Willome. This year, I read the facsimile edition published by the Charles Dickens Museum in London. It’s about as close as you can get to the original edition without having to spend a fortune on the first edition. It includes the original illustrations by John Leech. If you want to hold and read something very close to what the readers in 1843 experienced, this is it.

 

I’ve probably read the story a dozen times, and each time I find something new, or almost new. The official title is A Christmas Carol in Prose, A Ghost Story of Christmas. And Dickens meant exactly that – it was both a carol, or song, and a ghost story. To drive home the musical point, he didn’t use the word “chapters” for the five divisions of the book but instead the word “stave.” The British meaning of “stave” is “staff,” or the five lines and four spaces between them (says the Cambridge dictionary) on which musical notes are written. Dickens was writing a song, a song that was also a ghost story.

 

The Dickens Museum edition is a joy, and it’s reasonably priced (and you can’t buy it on Amazon, unless you find a used copy somewhere). 

 

A second story I read this year was On Christmas Day. It is a longish short story jointly published by Spitalfields Life and Burley Fisher Books. The editor (and, in this case, the author) doesn’t publicly disclose his name, simply calling himself “The Gentle Author.”

 

This edition is more life a poetry pamphlet or chapbook in design. It includes two delightful woodcuts of a snowy landscape by Reynolds Stone (1909-1979). It’s a story of a young boy, an only child, traveling with his parents to visit his maternal grandmother for Christmas. His parents consider the visit something of an ordeal and are filled with a palpable dread. The grandmother is quite the character.

 

The story has echoes of Dickens, Dylan Thomas and his A Child’s Christmas in Wales, and George Mackay Brown and his Christmas Stories. I was also reminded of A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote, to add an American connection. The Gentle Author’s story is a bittersweet one, in which the last surviving descendant on both sides of the family remembers a particular Christmas. (And like the Dickens facsimile edition, this one is only available through the Spitalfields Life link.)

 

The third and final story I read was Skipping Christmas by John Grisham. I found it at the sale shop at the Kirkwood Public Library; a first edition, it was published in 2001and looks brand new. Years ago, I’d been a Grisham fan, devouring his legal thrillers like A Time to Kill, The Client, and The Pelican Brief. I didn’t know he’d written a Christmas story.

 

Skipping Christmas is something decidedly different. Luther and Nora Krank, who live on Hemlock Avenue in a suburb of any city, see their daughter off to Peru for work with the Peace Corps. Luther calculates how much they spend each year on Christmas, some $6,100, and he suggests that they skip Christmas altogether and use half of that money for a Caribbean cruise. Nora finally agrees.

 

Like all firm resolutions, skipping Christmas is easier said than done. They must contend with neighbors, stationers and other merchants, co-workers, and everyone else who has a vested personal or financial interest in Christmas. Cultural and commercial Christmas keeps intruding on their plans, and the story becomes a test to see how long they can hold out. And what the final straw might be.

 

It's a simple, intriguing story, but it lacks a sympathetic character, even a minor one. Luther is not surnamed “Krank” for nothing, and even the street name of Hemlock is not only a tree but a poison. I think I understand why the story is not well-known.

 

Do you read any stories or novels for Christmas, or have any particular favorites? 

 

Top photograph by Roberto Nickson via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

The Weird and Wild Mind of Charles Williams – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Shane Skull: A Christmas Fairy Tale – Martin Shaw at The House of Beast & Vines.

 

A Prayer After the Moon Landing – Douglas Murray at The Free Press on the poem by W.H. Auden.

A Review of All 5 Dancing Priest Novels

Bill Grandi is a pastor in Indiana, cyclist, and regular blogger (two blogs, Cycleguy’s Spin and Living in the Shadow). Cycleguy’s Spin is about whatever might happen to be on Bill’s mind, and it’s always worth reading. Living in the Shadow is about his pastoral work, written largely for his flock but applicable to the rest of us as well. He often discusses what he’s working on for his sermons, inviting comment and commentary. 

He also turns out to be a faithful reader of the Dancing Priest novels. 

 

Bill has reread all five of the books, and today at Cycleguy’s Spin he’s posted a summary of each and an overall review. A writer can’t ask for a greater kindness and encouragement than that. You can read his review here.

A Year of Reading the Civil War

For a few years before 2022, I’d been occasionally reading about the American Civil War. It’s something I grew up with; my grandparents were all born after it was over, but their parents lived through it. Tw sets of great grandparents lived through the Union occupation of New Orleans; one set lived in an unoccupied part of Louisiana; and one set survived the war as parts of Mississippi were ravaged by war (and often repeatedly).  

This last group was the Youngs. Three sons and a son-in-law all enlisted in the Confederate army. One, the youngest, was too young to enlist when the war began but somehow signed up as a messenger boy. He was the only one to survive, and he was my great-grandfather Samuel. Not long after the wat, his father died, and Samuel became the family patriarch at the ripe old age of 23 or 24. Samuel lived until 1920; my father was four years old when his grandfather died. 

To continue reading, please see my post day at Dancing Priest.

Photograph: Camp scene, Union soldiers guarding Confederate prisoners; National Archives. 

A Blogging Respite and a Work-in-Progress

My posting may be irregular for a few weeks. I usually try to post daily, but I’ve gotten way behind on my reading. As in, I’m covered through tomorrow and not beyond that. The reason: the story that’s the work in progress. 

The idea for the story came during watching an online worship service at our church (a blessing during the virus pandemic). The worship leaders and musicians were leading the congregation in singing, when I noticed the guitar player had stopped for a moment, not losing his place, exactly, but as if something had struck so forcefully that it gave him pause. It was only a moment, and then he continued. 

 

And I asked myself, what might have caused that? Could I build a story around it?

 

I started writing in November. It happened in fits and starts, do-overs and delete-alls. Sometime in the Thanksgiving period, I realized the story wasn’t about the guitar player. He becomes a major character, but the story is about – and told by – someone else, an 11-year-old boy. I rewrote the beginning. I have the boy as a man, 20 years later. And he’s forced to consider what happened to his family when he was 11, when it was torn apart and almost atomized. And it doesn’t happen in a war zone, but in a St. Louis suburb.

 

I’m a long way from London and the Dancing Priest novels. 

 

Inspiration for a setting in Stonegate

By the end of December, I had passed 16,000 words. A week into the new year, and I had doubled that number. Things were moving swiftly, until I hit 40,000 words. Then I hit a wall. I couldn’t see where the story went next. I stopped. It took me a week, and a few walks, to begin to work it out. Fortunately, the weather was cooperating at the time, and we were still having a mild winter. I could go on hour-long walks. To help envision the sense of place, I took photos of three houses that are like three of the houses in the story. 

 

The writing has picked up again. I’ve passed 75,000 words, and the end is in sight. I know how the story will end, and I know the three major scenes left. 

 

The words have come at the expense of reading, which means also at the expense of blogging. I usually blog daily, four days a week about books. It’s going to be sporadic for a while. It’s disorienting to a degree because I’ve been posting daily since 2011, including during five trips to Britain. But to do this story right, something had to give.

 

I have a working title: Stonegate. It’s the story of a family blown apart when the oldest child, a 13-year-old, is accused of a criminal act, and no one believes he’s innocent except his 11-year-old brother. That guitar player, the guy who started the story in my head, is still there, but his role is not related to his guitar playing.

 

We’ll see where we go with this. I have no ETA. Once the draft is done, I’ll have to spend considerable time working it over, editing, and rewriting. I’ll continue to post for Tweetspeak Poetry, and I have a blog post publishing tomorrow for the American Christian Fiction Writers. The Friday and Sunday poems are already scheduled into January of 2022. Saturday Good Reads will continue. But expect the Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday book reviews to be sporadic. 

 

Top photograph by Vlad Shalaginov via Unsplash, Used with permission.

“The Cultural Revolution” and “Mao Zedong”

There’s considerable renewed interest in the Chinese Cultural Revolution that began in 1966 and didn’t officially end until the death of Mao Zedong in 1975. For those of us alive at the time, the reports were initially sparse; China was a closed society, and the U.S. and China did not have formal diplomatic ties until 1972.  

What we heard at the time sounded like thousands, perhaps millions, of young people had turned universities upside down, denounced professors and other members of the Chinese elite, and upended society almost to the point of breakdown. The death toll may have been in the millions; no one knows for sure, because no one kept records (and it was probably dangerous even to consider keeping records). The death toll has been estimated anywhere between hundreds of thousands to 20 million.

 

What would be apparent only much later was the extent Mao Zedong himself was involved in it. Much attention and speculation focused on the so-called “Gang of Four,” close confidants of Mao, including his fourth wife. But when people in China said anything about the group, they always held up five fingers.

The Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong are concise studies published and paired together by Captivating History. And what they make clear is Mao’s central role in starting the revolution, how he did, and, most intriguingly, why he did. The impetus for turning young people loose on their elites (and often their own parents) had much to do with Mao’s concern about his legacy, preserving Chinese communism, and retaining his own position of power.

 

His grip on the country had been slipping since the disastrous failures of his Five-Year Plan and the Great Leap Forward. Mao was also well aware of what happened in Russia to the legacy of Joseph Stalin, dismantled and upended after the dictator’s death. And he was well aware of the propensity of the political class to turn the country into some form of state-controlled capitalistic society. The Cultural Revolution was aimed at the very people most likely to challenge Mao’s grip on the country, and millions of people paid the price for the power struggle.

 

The Cultural Revolution provides the historical background to the event, the roles of key figures involved, Mao’s motivations, the context of a deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union, the mass killings and devastation that occurred (especially in north China), how it finally ended, and what were the long-term effects.

 

Mao Zedong explains the dictator’s early life (he did not come from the peasant or working class), how he came to embrace communism, the off-and-on battles with the Kuomintang of the Nationalist Party, the mythic Long March, the battles with Japan, the victory of the communists in 1949, and then the major events of Mao’s later life, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. 

 

What is clear is that there would have been no cultural revolution without Mao Zedong.

 

Captivating History, a kind of everyman’s history series, has published about 40 of these kinds of concise history books. In addition to these two on Chinese history, other publications have tackled a wide array of people and subjects, including Harriett Tubman, War of the Roses, Aaron Burr, Aztec history, ancient Israel, Egyptian mythology, and many others. The books provide a general overview for the general reader.

 

An interesting question is why there has been a renewed interest in the Cultural Revolution, especially in the United States and Western Europe. While so-called “cancel culture” exhibits only rudimentary similarities to what happened in China, concerns about American culture and society have been rising. The verbal attacks and campaigns against university professors, the often wholesale assaults on American history, schools being renamed, statues removed (and not only those of Confederates), and the often ruthless attacks on people on social media platforms all point to some kind of American “cultural revolution” being underway. 

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 6

A boy breaks a date with his girlfriend for the winter formal, a young woman with a secret struggles when love finds at her, a delightful story about a high school junior struggling with the death of her father and whose life changes at Christmas, and the stalking of a Nashville country star. This group of Christmas novellas has something for everyone. 

In Holly Hearts by Tanya Hanson, high school senior and part-time ranch hand Haggai Procter breaks his date with Elli Martin for the winter formal. The reason is that his mother is hiding something from him; she’s apparently sick and he believes they’ll need every bit of money to pay for expenses. The rest of his senior year, college, and a basketball scholarship look increasingly problematic.

 

Elli is disappointed, but she knows Haggai’s heart is in the right place. She, her father, and the large Martin clan at the Heart’s Crossing Ranch will help Haggai get through whatever it is he’s facing with his mother’s health. 

 

Midnight Clear by British author Autumn Macarthur takes place in Huckleberry Lake, Idaho. Claire Robinson is the town’s schoolteacher, and she resists the overtures from town handyman Ryan Connor with snark, put-downs, and borderline anger. She knows she’s attracted, but Claire harbors a secret about her past in Texas that she knows will destroy any hope for a relationship.

 

Ryan is loved by the town, and more than one person is trying to play matchmaker between him and Claire. He doesn’t need convincing, but he knows that something must have hurt Claire in the past and hurt her powerfully. The crisis arrives when the two are thrown together to help a friend give birth.

 

My Secret Santa by Jaclyn Weist turns out to be something of a sleeper surprise. Claire is your typical high school girl – bright, athletic (she’s trying out for the basketball team), snarky, and sarcastic. She’s trying to get over the death of her father while helping her mother run the town diner. What she doesn’t need is a regular group of boys, led by Chad Damon, ribbing and insulting her whenever they eat the diner. In fact, instead of calling her by name, Chad calls her “Diner Girl.”

 

Claire’s English class gets an assignment that’s grown out of A Christmas Carol. Each member of the class picks a name from a basket, and the assignment is to learn 10 things about the person whose name you’ve drawn. Claire draws Chad’s name, and from that point on her life turns upside down, including being on the receiving end of online bullying by Chad’s former girlfriend. She soon finds herself falling in love with the guy who calls her Diner Girl. The strength of My Secret Santa is the sparkling dialogue by the characters, which is going to take you right back to high school.

 

And now for the stalker. In The Christmas Stalking by Lillian Duncan, Nashville singing superstar Destiny, aka Holly Stone., is on the run. A stalker is after her, and the incidents are escalating toward violence. She’s cut her hair, changed her appearance, and heads back to the upstate New York town of Serenity and Peace, where she spent many summers with her grandparents. No one is supposed to know she’s there, most of all the stalker.

 

She almost immediately connects with Robby Trenton, a childhood friend who’s now the town sheriff, when he stops her for speeding. She eventually tells him her story about the stalker, and he works to protect her and perhaps find who’s doing it. Three suspects emerge, including Robby himself. And then there’s a wild climax in the woods. The story stretches a bit thin at points, but the season often strains credulity. 

 

Related:

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 1.

 

Christmas, Suspense, and Romance: Christmas Novellas, Part 2.

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 3.

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 4. 

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 5.

 

Top photograph by Eugene Zhyvchik via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Christmas Romance Novellas Part 5

A Canadian exchange teacher finds love next door in suburban London, a movie star comes home and discovers his childhood love, seat mates on an airline flight from Los Angeles to Minneapolis via Denver experience more than connecting flights, a New Orleans sous chef finds an old childhood friend in the Rockies of Colorado, and an interior designer with a domineering and bedridden boss loses her heart to the boss’s son. It’s the next batch of Christmas romance novellas. 

In Christmastime in London Town by Clare Revell, Kelly Seda is a Canadian schoolteacher raising his daughter Wendy on his own after his wife’s death. The opportunity to teach in London that he almost received unexpectedly reappears, with only a few days to prepare before he’s teaching first grade in a suburban London school. 

 

Staci Kirk is a writer raising her son Tommy alone, her husband having been killed in action in Afghanistan. She suddenly has a new neighbor, and she goes the extra mile to welcome Kelly and his daughter to England. As the Christmas holidays approach, Kelly and Staci discover there may be more to neighborliness. A major scene of the story takes place in central London, and it’s fun to read about Hanley’s Toy Store, the big Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, and St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church. 

 

A Christmas Homecoming by Kimberly Rose Johnson tells the story of interior designer Bailey Calderwood, who lives in Oregon and is working for a tough boss who’s recovering from a stroke. The boss’s son, Stephen Belafonte, returns home from France, where he’s been living after the death of his wife three years previously. 

 

His mother wants Stephen to fire Bailey, but she won’t say why. What Stephen learns is that Bailey is the glue holding the business together, and he doesn’t understand why she puts up with his mother’s bullying. He’s also falling for her. In addition to the family issues and a growing attraction to Stephen, Bailey senses she’s being followed everywhere she goes by someone driving a silver sedan. The story mixes together some Christmas, some romance, and a bit of suspense.

 

In Mistletoe Movie Star by Stacey Weeks, Jonas Blade is a movie star with a passel of romantic movies behind him (think the Hallmark Channel). He’s returning home to Misteltoe Meadows to close his grandfather’s estate, which included a lodge, a Christmas tree business, and even an old motel now occupied by homeless people when they’re not chased away by authorities. Charlene is Jonas’s old teenaged friend and now a veterinarian. Charlene’s also trying to convince the town’s council to do something for the homeless, while trying to watch out for three girls she suspects fall into that category.

 

Jonas and Charlene meet by accident (literally) and only slowly realize who they are; Jonas Blade is a film name and Charlene has changed considerably when they spent summers together as teens. He’s determined to help her address the homeless problem; the two are also rediscovering the love of their teen years. 

 

First Class Christmas by Katy Eeten brings together two seatmates on an airline flight. Mandy Brockman is flying home from Los Angeles, where she was in a friend’s wedding. She had expected to have her boyfriend be her wedding date and then go skiing with his family, but he broke up with her right before the wedding. On the plane, she’s seated next to Chase Hawkins, an Olympic pole vaulter also on his way home to Minneapolis. 

 

Mandy and Chase discover a mutual attraction, but there’s a problem. She’s drifted away from church, while Chase is not only firmly anchored in his faith but is also part of the church worship band and an outreach program to the city’s less fortunate. He pulls Mandy to the church service and to helping others, but will their relationship take off?

 

A New Orleans sous chef is the heroine of Deep Freeze Christmas by Marian Merritt.  Leona Buquet has accompanied chef Julian Mayeux from their native New Orleans to Colorado. They’ve been hired for a week to cook for some old friends of Julian’s who are in the movie production business. Leona is thrilled to be visiting a part of the country she’s never experienced, and to see snow at Christmastime. 

 

Cameron Fleming is the son of the movie production company chief, and he remembers growing up in New Orleans and helping Chef Julian in the kitchen, so much so that he really wanted to be a chef himself. He’s expected to accompany a diva of a movie star who’s also visiting, but he has no interest in her at all. But he knows Leona looks familiar, and a growing attraction between him and sous chef quickly leads to rekindling a long-ago childhood romance.

 

Related:

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 1.

 

Christmas, Suspense, and Romance: Christmas Novellas, Part 2.

 

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 3.

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 4. 

 

Top photograph by Levi Midnight via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 3

A Jane Austen lookalike, a holiday romance Down Under that may turn into something else, a boy who wants a dad (and a puppy) for Christmas, an unusual Christmas present from a sister, and a town so full of mistletoe that’s that what its name is– all are the subjects for Christmas novellas. 

In Christmas with Miss Austen by Laura Briggs, Julia Allen works in a coffee shop and volunteers at a historic home in Delaford, Mass. For the house’s December program, she dresses as Jane Austen and reads from Northanger Abbey, in keeping with the Regency Christmas theme. One night, as she’s hurrying home across a city park, she bumps into what she hopes isn’t a mugger, and in her hurry to get away she unknowingly drops the book, part of an antique set loaned to Julia by a friend for the readings.

 

Eliot Weston is a young college professor who happens to be the “non-mugger” Julia bumps into. He’s taken by the woman in period dress, but she disappears before he can find out who she is. He does find Northanger Abbey in the snow, and that sets in motion a series of events that may lead to Christmas romance. It’s a fun read whether you’re a Jane Austen fan or not.

 

The Present by Toni Sheridan (a pen name for author Ev Bishop) tells the story of Candice Cane-Bryant, a 20-something trying to hold down a job and care for younger twin brothers, an adult sister, and a much younger sister. It’s a family that happened because of their mother’s bad choices (and three marriages), And Candice has all she can do to simply get through each day. And life is generally crazier when it’s the Christmas season.

 

Her younger adult sister is a nurse, and she unexpectedly brings home a fellow nurse, Dean Harlowe, whom Candice assumes is the sister’s new boyfriend. Dean isn’t the sister’s new boyfriend; he’d seen Candice and become interested. The sister talks him into something of a setup for Candice, but everything keeps going badly wrong. The story hinges on whether Candice and Dean will overcome bad ideas about each other and find the relationship both are looking for.

 

In An Aussie Christmas Angel by Clare Revell, Englishman John Connington has taken leave from his job to travel the world, and as December rolls around he finds himself in Sydney, Australia. And without a place to stay, except for a seedy hostel whose guests seem more interested in stealing from your suitcase. His sister had given him a name to call in Sydney in case he ran into problems, and he finds himself spending a week with two young women, one of whom is getting ready for the wedding. 

 

The other young woman, Jo Heyward, is a bit put out having to accommodate a man and a stranger right before the busy Christmas season. But she decides to take to heart the Bible’s teaching about offering hospitality to strangers, and romantic interest suddenly and unexpectedly takes over for both John and Jo. But he’s returning to England after his week in Sydney. It’s an entertaining tale that happens to be based upon the true story of Revell’s brother.

 

In A Dad for Christmas, author Wendy Davy tells the tale of Reed Mason, a high school physics teacher in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. It’s nearing Christmas, and he notices his new neighbor, Emma Richards, in line with her young son Luke. He finds a letter to God on the floor (the kids drop them off at the post office), and the clerk asks him if he could take it home and pray for the anonymous child who wrote it. 

 

The letter’s author is Luke, and he’s hoping for a new dad. His dad had previously died, and he and his mom had moved from North Carolina to Virginia to make a fresh start. Luke’s confident that God will answer his prayer, and that his new dad will also like puppies. But is Reed, not to mention Emma, ready for romance? It’s a sentimental, heartwarming story, but then there’s nothing wrong with sentiment and warm hearts, especially at Christmas.

 

Mistletoe Melody by Stacey Weeks is the story of Melody Staff and Quentin Oxford. For Christmas, Melody, her adult siblings and their children, and her parents are staying at the inn in Mistletoe Meadows on Cape Cod. The inn is owned by Quentin’s parents, and the two families had long ago been neighbors. All Melody really remembers of Quentin is how, during his wild senior year in high school, he’d gotten his girlfriend pregnant. It’s now years later, and Quentin is rearing his daughter alone and his wife cleaned up from drug addiction but then during from an overdose when she relapsed.

 

Melody is also taking drugs for multiple sclerosis, a fact her family is aware but which everyone has concealed from outsiders. Quentin can see something is wrong, but Melody refuses to explain. What Melody doesn’t know is that Quentin has become a committed Christian, something he doesn’t go out of his way to divulge to Melody. Will lack of openness and misunderstandings wreck a relationship before it has a chance to start? 

Related:

Christmas Romance Novellas, Part 1.

Christmas, Suspense, and Romance: Christmas Novellas, Part 2.

 

Top photograph by Jonathan Borba via Unsplash. Used with permission.