Charming Christmas novel for cynics. Tom Douten (that is, Doubting Thomas) writes a column for the Chicago Tribune, usually a hard-hitting, often sad story about the poor and needy. He decides to attend an advanced journalism class at Northwestern led by Professor Noella Wright. The two are opposites in temperament: Noella’s an optimist, while Tom tends to seek the tragic. And she’s got a necklace with a platinum disc on where her birthday is inscribed as December 24th. She tells Tom that Santa gave her the necklace but made a mistake on that date. A doubting Tom decides he wants to research Santa, and gets his editor to finance a trip to the Black Forest (home of Kris Kringle) for an in-depth Christmas piece for the paper. When his small plane goes down over the Black Forest, killing the pilot and another passenger, injured Tom crawls through the forest until he passes out. After he awakens, he’s being cared for by Kris Kringle and his wife and helpers, the elves. Kris explains to Tom part of the mix-up about the necklace, then shows Tom how he makes the necklaces. Noella, meanwhile, thinks Tom is dead in the plane crash. Needless to say, things work out, and the reader may even come to believe in KK along the way. Part of the delight here is Tom’s analytical mind at work on what seems sheer fantasy: a love story not be left behind when orders for inspirational titles are filled out. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88176-7
Page Count: 209
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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