TITLE: A Christmas Hope
AUTHOR: Joseph Pittman
PUBLICATION DATE: 09/25/12
ORDER LINKS: Amazon 
BOOK SYNOPSIS:
ONE FINAL CHRISTMAS WISH COULD CHANGE THEIR LIVES FOREVER…
Nora Connors Rainer has returned to her hometown, Linden Corners, to tend to her elderly but spunky pie-baking mother–and to nurse a broken heart. To keep busy, Nora opens “A Doll’s Attic,” a consignment shop where locals can unload their unwanted heirlooms. And the upcoming holidays are bringing a host of interesting objects–and people–through her doors.
Eighty-five year old Thomas Van Diver hands Nora her first challenge: track down a rare, vintage item that holds powerful childhood memories for him–memories of his father and their last Christmas together before he went off to the war and never returned.
Helping them both is Brian Duncan, whose farmhouse and windmill Thomas once called home. Together with his irrepressible young charge, Janey Sullivan, Brian will uncover the mysteries of Christmas past–and create a Christmas present that just might restore their hope, and fulfill everyone’s deepest wishes.
REVIEW:
I cried! I honestly can not tell you the last story I read where I even got choked up neither less had to grab a tissue but this one I had a tissue in hand for the last third of the book. This is a very well written story that I can only hope Hallmark Channel or Lifetime is smart enough to buy the rights to. This story has a bit of romance to it but that is not what this story is about. This is the story of Thomas and the past he is trying to return to by finding the book his dad gave him as a child. There is a lot of loss in this book but also the underlying moral that family is what and who you make it to be.
Set in a typical “Norman Rockwell” small town the characters come alive as the holidays approach the town. The main character of Thomas is a old man now and the type of man that you want to sit down on a porch rocking chair with and hear his stories. The author has really written Thomas in an endearing and captivating way. You really just want to invite him to dinner. Nora and Brian are strangers who for their own reasons have come to town, Nora returning to live with her mom and Brian who was “just passing through” years ago but for reason beyond his control has stayed.
While Thomas is written really well, I am not sure that the other characters way of speaking was typical of the current time frame. Even the children sometimes spoke “too proper” for their age and some odd comments were made that just felt a little off (I mean really what 80+ year old man has not heard of strawberry pie?) but none of these oddities take away from the delightful and poignant story. As I said above I can see this book being made into a made for tv movie and I hope if it is one day turned into a movie they will do this book justice because it deserves to be enjoyed.
Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
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