The Angel Doll
A Christmas Story
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
If even a small part of a child still lives within your heart, you can't help but be captivated by this deeply moving novella based on bestselling author Jerry Bledsoe's childhood memories.
Set in a North Carolina manufacturing town during the 1950s, it is the poignant story of two ten-year-old boys and their search for an angel doll, a search that turned into a lesson of love.
Every day Whitey Black reads The Littlest Angel to his sister Sandy, a four-year-old stricken with polio. Now she wants just one thing for Christmas: an angel doll. Unfortunately, in this small North Carolina town, no one has ever heard of such a thing. Nevertheless, Whitey Black and his best friend set out to find her one, at great cost and for even greater reward.
Along the way they learn much about sadness and heartbreak, but most important, they learn about the transformative power of love.
The Angel Doll is about childhood reaching out in later life and grabbing hold-never to be forgotten or remembered exactly as it was. Timeless and touching, The Angel Doll is sure to become a family favorite and a tradition for years to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Proof that a Christmas book need not drip with mawkish sentimentality is offered by this affecting novella from the author of such true-crime novels as Bitter Blood. Though published as fiction, the story Bledsoe tells has the ring of truth, plus the asset of his lean prose and carefully nuanced delivery. The tale is set in the early 1950s in a small North Carolina town, where the 10-year-old narrator shares a newspaper route with a friend, Whitey Black. Whitey's father is dead, and his younger sister, Sandy, has survived polio with a wasted leg and precarious health. Inspired by her favorite book, the classic The Littlest Angel, Sandy hopes for an angel doll for Christmas. How Whitey manages to find the doll, and the tragic event that ensues, is the substance of the story. Because Bledsoe doesn't milk the emotions, the poignant ending is neither manipulative nor preachy, but authentically moving. One wishes, however, that the illustrations by Tim Rickard were a tad more sophisticated.
