Christmas in Calico - Hardcover

Curtis, Jack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0875965431 ISBN 13: 9780875965437

Publisher: Daybreak Books, 1998

Synopsis

Distinguished writer Jack Curtis winningly combines suspense and a timeless holiday message with the best Western literary tradition in this dramatic novel. Heavy with child, Rose Cameron and her delicate son, Tommy, have tried to carry on her late husband's dream of a successful horse ranch despite a long drought, a thieving hired hand, and neighbors who want her land. But the hardest ordeal of all happens during Christmas, when a winter-kill blizzard sweeps the Nevada prairie, forcing Rose and Tommy to seek refuge in the poor town of Calico, where they must depend on the kindness of desperate strangers-and one mysterious lone rider-to survive and restore their lives.

About this title

About the Author:

Jack Curtis is the author of 18 popular Westerns including The Quiet Cowboy (Pocket Books, 1994) and Eagles Over Big Sur (Borgo Press, 1988). Jack has also written short stories and award-winning poetry, and was a television writer for twelve years for series including Zane Grey Theater, Gunsmoke, and Dr. Kildare. He lives with his wife and four children on Apple Pie Ranch in Big Sur, California and in San Jose del Cabo, B.C.S., Mexico.

From Publishers Weekly:

A veteran writer of TV westerns and 18 previous novels, Curtis (The Kloochman) sets this appealing blend of the nativity story and Dickens's A Christmas Carol in a Nevada landscape about 100 years ago. Brave and feisty widow Rose Cameron ("her face honest as a looking glass") leaves her failing ranch in a howling blizzard to find medical attention for her sick son, Tommy. Ever since her husband died eight months ago, Rose has been trying to keep the Circle C ranch solvent, but a severe drought has depressed the region, drying up everyone's land, money and the milk of human kindness. Rather than offer their assistance, the predatory ranchers whose acreage abuts the Circle C have done their best to cheat Rose and hasten foreclosure. When Rose and Tommy arrive in the nearby town of Calico, they are refused shelter by the hardhearted banker, hotel owner and pastor; only the denizens of shacktown offer food, a room and hospitality. Then banker Max Gotch convinces desperate Rose to sign away her rights to the ranch. All seems lostAbut wait! Joel Reese, a cowhand and drifter with "honest eyes and courteous virility" will be Rose's savior. Curtis stacks his cards blatantly and herds stereotypes into the narrative: the prostitute with a heart of gold; the Scrooge-like banker who has a vision and miraculously changes his ways; the baby born on Christmas Eve. But his sentimental story gains color from homespun dialogue rendered with a Western twang, and its earnest message of compassion for the less fortunate gives his predictable plot a satisfying holiday moral. $35,000 ad/promo. Agent, Mildred Marmur. (Nov.) FYI: Rodale is issuing Christmas in Calico as its first book of fiction.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Daybreak Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0875965431
• ISBN 13: 9780875965437
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192