The Christmas Store: A Humble Miracle

The small city of Frogmorton, Wisconsin, is the home of the Christmas Store, a mazelike collection of interconnected buildings housing an Italian bakery, a florist, a grocery … and many other businesses, including a shop with the finest holiday decorations in the Central Time Zone. The Christmas Store also provides miracles. Not thunderous, earth-shattering, apocalyptic miracles, but those small, modest miracles that often pass for good luck or coincidence. Eddie Barnes is a newcomer to town. After a horrific car accident left his mother near death, and after his heartless father abandoned him, Eddie was compelled to move from Los Angeles to Frogmorton, where he lives with his uncle, and is now the ‘new kid’ at Frogmorton High, beginning his junior year. Lonely and anxious at first, Eddie begins to establish relationships with several students that he comes to think of as ‘near-friends.’ He also engages in an unusual, frightening, and awkward relationship with a rather unique senior at the high school, Delilah Anderson—‘Del’ to those who would rather not be abused. And Eddie begins to clumsily sense what might lie beyond friendship. But just as Eddie is beginning to feel that Frogmorton is becoming his home, tragedy deals him one more devastating blow. With his faith in life and his hope for the future all but crushed, can the Christmas Store deliver the greatest miracle of all?