Saturday, November 27, 2021

Comfort & Joy: A Fable by Kristin Hannah (2005)

 

I first came across this book when compiling a list of the Christmas fiction in the library’s collection. The title certainly sounds Christmassy but the first subject heading in the catalog is “Survival after airplane accident”. You might ask, as I did, what that has to do with Christmas.  As it turns out, quite a bit.

Joy Candellaro has always loved Christmas but as the holiday approaches, she finds herself divorced and alone, and doesn’t feel like celebrating. So without telling anyone, she buys a last-minute ticket and boards a private plane headed for the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately the plane crashes in the Olympic rainforest. With no one knowing where she is Joy decides to just walk away from her ordinary life and thus begins an adventure unlike any she could have imagined.

Joy ends up in the small town of Rain Valley where six-year-old Bobby O’Shea is facing his first Christmas without his mother. Unable to handle the loss, Bobby has closed himself off from the world and his father Daniel who is desperate to help his son cope. Yet when the little boy meets Joy, they form a deep and powerful bond. In helping Bobby and Daniel heal, Joy finds herself again.

Not everything is as it seems in quiet Rain Valley, and in an instant, Joy’s world is ripped apart and her heart is broken. On a magical Christmas Eve, a night of impossible dreams and unexpected chances, Joy must find the courage to believe in a love—and a family—that can’t possibly exist and go in search of what she wants and the new life only she can find.

Hannah shows us once again the power of love and that dreams can come true at Christmas and all year round.

3.57 stars on Goodreads, 4.3 stars on Amazon

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