Charlene Dixon---called Charlie by family and friends---is devastated at the recent loss of her job.
For the last five years, the twenty-seven-year-old has blossomed as the activities director of an exclusive all-girls school. But when a misunderstanding with the headmistress leads to a pink slip right before the holidays, Charlie packs up her dreams and returns to her grandmother, Sis, who raised Charlie as her own in the mountains of North Carolina.
When Charlie arrives---broken and confused---Sis immediately puts her granddaughter to work behind the scenes of the local school's Christmas play, A Christmas Carol. Charlie prickles at working with Dustin Kennedy, the drama teacher and her old crush from schooldays, but is even more put out at that the choice of the Dickens' classic for the holiday performance. When she discovers her estranged father's involvement her world turns on its head once more. But when Sis and Dustin encourage her to take a deeper look at the story behind A Christmas Carol, Charlie learns about trust, faith, and forgiveness and the needs of people in their own community.
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My Review:
I really enjoyed Eva Marie Everson’s spin on A Christmas Carol. This was not a retelling but a contemporary story
that portrayed the very important truths Charles Dickens classic sought to
voice. Charlene Dixon, Charlie for
short, has returned home to her grandmother’s house after losing her job. It is Thanksgiving time and the town is in
full holiday spirit. Charlie runs into a
couple of people she did not expect to, former crush Dustin, who is now a
widower with a son, and her father whom she has not seen since she was a child
and he was led away in handcuffs.
Charlie realizes that she has some ghosts from her past that needs to be
dealt with so that she may live earnestly in her present and have hope for her
future.
As Charlie works with Dusty on the school play A Christmas Carol, she is set upon a journey of what true
forgiveness looks like. I really enjoyed
learning, along with Charlie, the history of why Charles Dickens wrote his
famous Christmas story: he was trying to bring back the joy and the hope of the
season after the Puritans had nearly snuffed it out and dealing with his own
turbulent past with his father. I look
forward to re- watching the movie this holiday season with this new background information. This is a heartwarming read for the coming up
holidays with a little bit of romance and Christmas magic thrown in.
I received a copy for an honest review through Litfuse Publicity
and the opinions are my own.
Eva Marie Everson is an award-winning speaker and author of The Road to Testament, Things Left Unspoken, This Fine Life, Chasing Sunsets, Waiting for Sunrise, Slow Moon Rising, and The Potluck Club series (with Linda Evans Shepherd). She is the president of Word Weavers International, Inc., a member of AWSA, ACFW, RWA, the director of Florida Christian Writer's Conference, and the contest director for Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writer's Conference. She and her husband make their home in Casselberry, Florida.
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