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Author Biography |
Review |
Excerpt
Hardcover
St. Martin's Press ISBN: 9780312367763 Each Christmas we are given a promise from heaven. And each year on earth we make promises to each other. This is a story about how a promise from one person to another shows us the true meaning of faith, remembrance, and love. Seven years ago Gloria endured a family tragedy that almost shook her faith entirely. Each Christmas she places a card in an envelope on her tree, restating a promise she made to her husband before he died. Now, having moved from her small town and all the painful memories it held, she is building a life by caring for people in need. Whether it’s a young mother who can’t pay her electric bill or a family who needs some extra food, Gloria always finds a way. Miriam is a thorn in Gloria’s side. Miriam is a constantly critical, disapproving neighbor who looks with suspicion at all the good things Gloria does. When a twist of fate makes them roommates instead of neighbors, it’s the ultimate test of patience and faith. Chaz has a good job as head of security at Wilson’s Department Store, but each night he returns home to an empty apartment. He longs for a wife and family of his own but realizes that the life choices he’s made have alienated him. He befriends a young boy whose mother has fallen on hard times, giving him a chance to have a life he thought impossible. In The Christmas Promise, the lives of these characters collide and we learn that even as we move ahead, the past is never far behind. And when we are forgiven much, we love much. In this warmly humorous and deeply poignant story, we are reminded that the Christmas Promise is the promise of second chances. 
Donna VanLiere is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author and gifted conference speaker. She has published eight titles including The Christmas Shoes and The Christmas Blessing, both of which were adapted into movies and big ratings for CBS television. Her non-seasonal novel, The Angels of Morgan Hill, has captured the same warmth as her Christmas books and continues to please loyal and new fans alike.
Donna is the recipient of a Retailer's Choice Award for Fiction, a Dove Award, a Silver Angel Award, an Audie Award for best inspirational fiction, and a nominee for a Gold Medallion Book of the Year. Donna is an in-demand conference speaker having appeared at countless women's and family events, including select "Women of Faith" conferences. Donna's newest novel, The Christmas Promise, is the fourth in The Christmas Hope series. Donna lives in Franklin, Tennessee, with her husband, Troy, and their children, Grace, Kate and David. Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com. 
Grace and the promise of new beginnings make Donna VanLiere’s fourth novel in The Christmas Hope series, THE CHRISTMAS PROMISE, a charmingly poignant seasonal read.
VanLiere tells her story through the characters of the delightful 60-year-old Gloria Bailey and the down-on-his-luck 24-year-old Chaz McConnell. Although tough and practical when it’s called for, “Miss Glory” has a heart as soft as a marshmallow for those in need. Assisting others also helps Gloria alleviate her own hurts --- the death of her husband and the disappearance of her teenage son seven years ago. “It’s a terrifying thing to give your heart to that small band of people around you, knowing that relationships can be messy and that someday your heart may be broken and you’ll come undone.” Every year Gloria puts an envelope on the Christmas tree for her husband with a promise inside it that she’ll never stop looking for their missing son. Although she loves helping others, Gloria can’t warm up to the person in closest proximity to her --- the irascible widow and next-door-neighbor Miriam. When Miriam’s house turns into a disaster area and all the local hotels are booked solid, Gloria offers a room to the woman who repels her the most. How will she survive the holidays with such a bitter, repulsive, sarcastic person? Meanwhile, Chaz is barely making enough money to get by. He’s despaired of turning over a new leaf after a checkered past of drinking and gambling, and when he takes a job at Wilson’s Department Store in security, he sees it as only temporary. Drinking is still the high point of his days. When Chaz finds himself beginning to care about a little boy whose mother works at the store and worrying about the homeless man who sleeps outside in the cold, he’s afraid of his emotions. Caring about people, he believes, comes at too high of a cost. VanLiere does a good job portraying the vicious and abusive cycle women can fall into through the character of Carla, a young single mother who Gloria helps. Although her heart is soft, Gloria is clear-eyed and tough when she needs to be, and under no illusions about those she assists. Some of the sub-themes, such as the couple who keeps their Christmas lights on all year round and the unwed pregnant woman estranged from her mother, are guaranteed to melt the hardest heart, while the antics of the mischievous, fatherless boy Donavan will make readers smile. Themes of forgiveness and unconditional love resonate throughout the novel. It won’t take readers long to put two and two together and figure out how the story ends, but even so, they may have to reach for a tissue. The story goes on a little longer than it should, but this will please those who like to have all the loose ends tied up, even if the conclusion seems a bit anticlimactic. Plenty of humor is scattered throughout the book, and readers will especially enjoy some of the sayings on Gloria’s plaques. One favorite is this revision of the “Serenity Prayer”: “Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, The good fortune to run into the ones I do, And the eyesight to tell the difference.” This little quote is going on my refrigerator door. Readers who made THE CHRISTMAS SHOES, THE CHRISTMAS BLESSING and THE CHRISTMAS HOPE popular holiday reads will be delighted with this fourth installment in the series. Fans of happily-ever-after seasonal fiction should also find THE CHRISTMAS PROMISE exactly to their taste. --- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby. Contact Cindy at phrelanzer@aol.com. 
Preface
A fresh blanket of snow fell last night. Sparkling white mounds sit on top of the shrubs outside my kitchen window. I fall into a chair at the table and pour cream into my coffee. My friend Jack is working on a car in my driveway; I can see his breath in the air. I haven’t known Jack long, only a year. “The Year of Wonders,” I call it. I’m still trying to piece the year together but I don’t think I ever will. Maybe I’m not supposed to; that’s the beauty of the mystery. When I was a young mother I loved to see the Christmas season begin. The day after Thanksgiving I’d put in my favorite cassette of songs with Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, and Burl Ives and the sounds of Christmas would fill our home as I hauled down the wooden Nativity set from the attic along with a battered fake tree. My children and husband and I would decorate it and by the time we were finished it was always icicle heavy and bulb poor but we took pictures as if the tree were standing on the White House lawn. One winter, my youngest son, Matthew pressed his nose to the living room window and watched snowfall, covering our lawn. “Now it’s Christmas,” he had said. "Snow doesn't make Christmas," I had said. "There are a lot of states and countries that never see a flake of snow. It's the promise of Christmas that makes Christmas what it is." Matthew watched the snow cover the grass outside the living room window and pressed his nose to the glass. "Promise of what?" I sat on the floor next to him. "Well, it's the promise of love and grace. Grace was given to us at Christmas. That's the biggest promise of all.” My husband Walt thought it would be an adventure if the family trekked out to cut our own tree that year. We bundled up the kids and drove to a friend’s farm where Walt led us through what felt like miles of pastureland before we arrived at a small thicket of woods. My son Daniel spotted the perfect tree and Walt whacked at the bottom branches so he could get a clear shot at the trunk. Walt hadn’t thought about sharpening the ax before we left that morning and after several whacks he was tired and leaning up against a tree to catch his breath. Each of our children attempted to carve away at the tree but of course they were all too small to do much damage. Walt was angry with himself for not sharpening the ax and though I tried to stifle my laughs I couldn’t. He got down on his belly and was whittling away at the trunk as if with a pocket knife and I laughed harder as the pine needles poked and jabbed at his face. He kicked at the trunk several times, bouncing off the branches and landing on the ground. The kids began to squeal watching him and soon they were running around the tree giggling and kicking at it. Walt whacked, whittled and lashed out at that tree until it finally surrendered and we laughed all the way back over the pastureland to the car. For seven years of my life I dreaded to see Christmas come. I had lost my husband and youngest son within two weeks of each other and those sweet memories with my family proved to be too painful to remember but devastating to forget. It’s a terrifying thing to give your heart to that small band of people around you, knowing that relationships can be messy and that someday your heart will broken and you’ll come undone. That’s the riskiest part of this human journey. In the past year, I think I’ve finally learned that there are some things that God doesn’t want us to forget so he allows us to go back to those memories, not daily, but on occasion, and remember. It’s in those moments we discover that somehow, someway, God entwines both remembering and forgetting and shapes them into beauty, something that actually makes sense of the mess in our lives. I still have a hard time understanding that kind of grace and although there are days when I feel unworthy to accept it, I do. If I didn’t I’d go crazy. We all would. This story is about a lot of people; I've just been designated to tell it. There are days when I look back on the last year and think, how did it all come together? Then there are days when I wonder why it all couldn’t have happened sooner. But it's everyday that I know that in spite of us grace will prevail. That's the promise of Christmas. Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com. |
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