A Christmas Memory

A profoundly tender, multi-generational story about a friendship that liberates a grief-stricken eight-year-old during Christmas 1967. 

In A Christmas Memory, Richard Paul Evans--author of more than 40 novels--delivers an emotionally moving fictionalized story that pays homage to a man who made a profound impact on the author’s early life.

 

The story begins in 1967, in Pasadena, Calif., and centers on Rick, a sensitive and bright--yet socially awkward--eight-year-old with Tourette’s syndrome. When Rick’s brother, Mark--ten years older--dies in the Vietnam war, his death drives a wedge between his parents. The loss is compounded by the fact that Mark “didn’t believe in war and didn’t want to go.” As the family struggles to deal with grief and guilt, Rick’s father loses his job. This forces a move to Salt Lake City, Utah, where Rick’s mother was born and raised. Shortly after the family settles into Rick’s deceased grandmother’s house, Rick’s parents separate. While his mother sinks into a severe depression, Rick is bullied by peers and badgered by an ogre teacher. Respite is found when Rick befriends a neighbor’s dog and ultimately the dog’s elderly owner, Mr. Foster. This African American man of integrity--a contemporary of Rick’s grandmother, separated from his own family--opens his house and heart to the young boy. He offers companionship and wisdom that shepherds Rick through sad uncertainty that ultimately coalesces into a touching and most memorable Christmas.

 

Themes of friendship and forgiveness infuse Evans’s (Michael Vey 8; The Road Home) beautifully tender story that delivers a heartfelt message about remembrance, love and hope.

 

A Christmas Memory: A Novel by Richard Paul Evans

Gallery Books (Simon and Schuster), $17.99 hardcover, 9781982177447, 192 pages

Publication Date: November 22, 2022

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Sugar and Salt

A compassionate, moving story about two chefs from different worlds who join forces in business and love—their relationship tested by the past.

 

Lingering difficulties from the past simmer throughout Sugar and Salt, a compassionately poignant novel of domestic fiction by author Susan Wiggs.

 

Through a staggered timeline, Wiggs (The Lost and Found Bookshop) builds a romance between two characters who come from vastly different backgrounds: Margot Salton of Texas traveled a long, hard road to become an award-winning chef. As a teenager, she forged her own way in the world after her single mother--a talented cook--died. Tough, street smart and self-reliant, Margot was taken in--mentored--by a kind, hardworking African American couple, owners of an authentic Texas barbecue restaurant until a second tragedy upended Margot’s life. Determined to cut her losses and start anew, budding barbecue master Margot changes her identity and sets off, leaving Texas behind and winding up in San Francisco, Calif., where she meets Jerome Sugar, an African American baker who learned everything he knows from his warm, self-made grandmother, Ida. The single father of two operates Ida’s well-established, popular bakery, ‘Sugar.’ When Margot and Jerome work out a deal to share kitchen space, and she opens her own restaurant next door called ‘Salt,’ the two form a professional bond that leads to romance. However, when complications from Margot’s former Texas life resurface, the couple’s relationship is tested. Can love in the present survive far reaching tentacles from a sordid past?   

 

Hot-button issues from real life events inspired Wiggs to write this complex, thought-provoking novel that depicts how the power of friendship and love can overcome heart-wrenching challenges.

 

Sugar and Salt: A Novel by Susan Wiggs

William Morrow Books/Harper Collins, $27.99 hardcover, 9780062914224, 368 pages

Publication Date: July 25, 2022

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 NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 29, 2022), link HERE