To outsiders, Appleville, New Hampshire, is a storybook small town. To Gincy Gannon Luongo, it was a place to escape from as quickly as she could. Since she moved away twenty years ago, Appleville has been her hometown in name only. But at her brother Tommy's urging, Gincy is coming back to visit their recently widowed mother in the weeks leading up to Christmas-and she's bringing her teenage daughter, Tamsin, with her. Ellen Gannon, once feisty and strong-willed, is mired in depression. Tommy isn't doing much better. Gincy starts restoring order to the household in her usual practical way, but it's clear that imagined slights and lingering resentments have created deep chasms. With each day, she realizes she has seriously undervalued her mother and her brother. Only now, with the support of her husband, daughter, and best friends, does she see how much she may have missed. For beyond the surface of every family and every picturesque town is something more complicated but infinitely more rewarding-a tapestry of those small acts of acceptance, love, and loyalty that could transform this Christmas into the best Gincy's ever known.

Author Biography

Holly Chamberlin was born and raised in New York City. After earning a Master's degree in English Literature from New York University and working as an editor in the publishing industry for ten years, she moved to Boston, married and became a freelance editor and writer. She and her husband now live in downtown Portland, Maine, in a restored mid-nineteenth-century brick townhouse with Betty, the most athletic, beautiful and intelligent cat in the world. Readers can visit her website at-www.hollychamberlin.com.