The Last Noel

A Story of Grief, Grace, and Finding Faith in the Darkness

"We’re trusting you won’t mess it up this time." 

Firefighter Reuben Morales has stared down infernos and pulled victims from burning buildings, but nothing has prepared him for the challenge of directing his church's Christmas pageant.

Fourteen years ago, his sister Vera transformed the sacred production into a spectacle that made the Morales family a community joke. Now Reuben has one shot at redemption: deliver a powerful, soul-stirring performance that will prove the Morales name still stands for something. He has exactly two months to pull it off. Or they will forever be the family that ruined Christmas. Twice.

Then his sister Vera dies in a tragic car accident, and Reuben's carefully laid plans crumble to ash. The grief is crushing, but worse is the knowledge that haunts his every waking moment—his sister never accepted Christ, and her eternal fate torments him as he questions everything he once believed.

How can he celebrate anything when his sister may be lost forever? How can he proclaim the birth of the Savior when his heart is wrapped in sorrow? And when the teenage arsonist he personally arrested—the punk who burned down beloved local businesses—walks free on a technicality, Reuben's faith doesn't just crack. It shatters completely.

With opening night approaching and his soul drowning in doubt, Reuben faces an impossible choice: walk away from the pageant and cement his family's legacy of failure, or push through the suffocating cloud.

When the darkness is blackest, hope shines like a ray of light as Reuben learns that the answers to his weighty questions--about justice and freewill, predestination and hell--all find an answer in the simple story of Christmas: peace on earth, goodwill to men. 

A novel of family, love, hope, and eternal decisions.

Praise for The Last Noel:

★★★★★ "I needed to read its message of hope during a rough patch… Isn’t it just like the Lord to use fiction to teach us?”

★★★★★ "I know Reuben’s pain… I'm now learning, through Reuben, to ‘rest in the Lord.’"

★★★★★★ "This book just blew my socks off! I gave it 6 stars—a rating very few books receive."

This Christmas, discover a story where faith is tested, hope is ignited, and redemption shines through the flames.