Ann Matlock Curtiss: Miracle on I-40

Ann Matlock Curtiss tarjoilee joulun henkeä ajoittain tihkuvan viihderomaanin, jossa yksinhuoltajaäiti matkustaa vanhempiensa luokse vastentahtoisen rekkakuskin kyydissä: Miracle on I-40 (Belgrave house, 2012; ISBN 978-1-61084-715-5).



Kirjaa voisi mainostaa klassikoksikin, siinä määrin se ammentaa joulun tienoille sijoittuvista tarinoista, muun muassa Charles Dickensin tarinan Scrooge-hahmosta. Niin, ja löytyy kertomuksesta joulupukkikin, keskellä lumimyrskyä joka keskeyttää matkanteon joksikin aikaa. Ihan maukas pienimuotoinen tarina, joka sopii luettavaksi näin joulun aikaan.

Lacey Bryant is the ever-hopeful waitress at Gerald's Truckstop Restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a spot that is clear across the country from her home and family in North Carolina. It has been eleven years since Lacey ran away from her angry father. Now, a single mother struggling to raise her own children, her heart yearns to go home for Christmas. She longs for her father's forgiveness, her mother's sweet embrace, and to share with her aging parents the grandchildren they have never seen. Cooper is every inch a Scrooge whose hard knocks in life took away any belief in the glory of Christmas. He definitely wants no part of traveling across country with two children. But he has promised to help out a friend, and he can’t manage to tell Lacey no. So he loads the woman and her brood into his eighteen-wheeler and carries them along with him on his trip down Interstate 40. As the miles roll under the big truck's wheels, it turns out to be Lacey and her children who are bringing Cooper along with them, on a journey that takes them all home to the heart.