Real Santa
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
George Kronenfeldt is an unemployed engineer with one shot to keep his daughter's belief in Santa intact. When Megan tells him the only way she will believe in Santa is if she can videotape him and then tells her fourth grade class she will prove the existence of Santa Claus by posting her video to YouTube, George realizes he must become the Real Santa. He devises a plan to land nine reindeer on his roof and go down his chimney, hiring a broken down movie director who eventually has him funding a full scale production that bankrupts him and threatens his marriage. When George goes to find the “Real Santa” to help him, the line between what is real and magic is crossed. Real Santa is a funny heartwarming story of parenthood gone wrong and illuminates what lengths parents will go to keep their children happy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This sometimes humorous and often maudlin yuletide novel from Hazelgrove (The Pitcher) concerns an exuberant father going all out to prove to his young daughter that Santa Claus is a real entity. Fifty-year-old George Kronenfeldt, a dogged bridge engineer living in Chicago, has been laid off 12 days before Christmas. More trouble follows when George learns his nine-year-old daughter, Megan, has serious doubts about Santa Claus. Rather than do the grown-up thing and admit Saint Nick is a myth, George decides to organize an elaborate hoax on Christmas Eve. George is also driven by the guilt he suffers from neglecting his children, although his spoiled son, Jeremy, and other daughter, Jamie, are almost adults. His patient wife, Mary, goes along with George's big idea as he recruits his father, Kronenfeldt Sr., and Dean Sanders, a journeyman Australian movie director who likes to shout the exclamation "stupendous," into the masquerade. Finally, George rents nine flatulent reindeers from Big Bill McGruff, and Mary's patience finally runs out when her husband runs up a debt to the tune of a hundred grand to finance the spectacle. Meantime, George's nemesis, Mrs. Barbara Worthington, who is Megan's 70-year-old schoolteacher, delights in crushing her students's joyful anticipation of Father Christmas. Hazelgrove's lively, improbable narrative will appeal to the readers in the mood for holiday fiction.
