It's Christmas, and Carol Dickens's life is in major transition. Her son Finn, a talented trumpet player, is about to leave for college. Her ex-husband, a real-estate wheeler-dealer, wants to sell their properties in Kansas and move to Arizona. Her wheelchair-bound friend, Laurence, has fallen in love with her. To top it all off, Scraps, the family dog, is dying. As her world spins out of control, Carol seeks refuge in her research on the use of the semicolon--and in her ritual of cooking the perfect series of Victorian holiday meals inspired by A Christmas Carol.
Thomas Fox Averill, a graduate of the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, is professor of English and writer-in-residence at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. An O. Henry Award winner, he is the author of several books, including Secrets of the Tsil Café, available in paperback from UNM Press in spring 2012.
"A tale of loss, redemption. and transformation."--Topeka Magazine
"A compelling Christmas tale."--Library Journal
"Cheery yuletide traditions are hampered by modern-day distractions in A Carol Dickens Christmas by Thomas Fox Averill, a charming story that pieces together morsels drawn from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol: Christmas songs, poems, recipes, and themes of family and change. . . . A Carol Dickens Christmas captures the essence of Christmas, revealing that changes can sometimes bring blessings."--Foreword Reviews
"Averill's new book, A Carol Dickens Christmas: A Novel, takes the built-in structure of Christmas and spins a heart-warming story that echoes such classics as A Christmas Carol, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, The Night Before Christmas, The Twelve Days of Christmas, and the biblical Christmas story."--Topeka Capital-Journal
"Delightful."--The Manhattan Mercury
"A Carol Dickens Christmas is a book that's more than the sum of its parts: It's a tale of seemingly ordinary people and their more or less ordinary lives that speaks to deeper truths of what it means to be human, what it means to change, what it means to love."--The Wichita Eagle
"[A Carol Dickens Christmas] is a story of family and food, community and tradition, and it captures the wistful melancholy of the season as well as its hope and cheer."--Kansas History
"This book is a gift, a stirring mix of Dickens; Hispanic American culture; food, drink, and generosity, brought together with a perfectly measured plot and spiced with Averill's savory prose. Recommended cold-weather reading, but will bring back the flavor of the holidays at any time of the year."--John Reimringer, author of Vestments
"The Christmas spirit was in short supply this year, until I read Tom Averill's plum pudding of a book. It's a heady, rich, contemporary take on transitions, traditions and the true meaning of Christmas. (Recipes included!)"--Linda Brand, director of the Kansas City Rep's A Christmas Carol for nine seasons
"A memorable Christmas story on its own terms, A Carol Dickens Christmas also subtly reworks Charles Dickens's classic with a multicultural cast. Thomas Fox Averill contributes an important addition to 'Victorian afterlife' fiction and offers special treats to 'foodies' too."--Linda K. Hughes, Addie Levy Professor of Literature, Texas Christian University
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