Christmas Jars by Jason F. Wright

Hope Jenson is celebrating her first Christmas without her adoptive mother. It is Christmas Eve and when she comes back from their traditionally Christmas Eve restaurant she finds her apartment has been broken into and things have been stolen. She calls the police and while they are there a jar full of money shows up outside her door. Nobody saw who put it there. On the jar is written Christmas Jar.

Hope works at the local newspaper and she decides to do some investigating. She finds a couple other references to the Christmas Jar in past printings and talks to each one of those families. She finds that none of them want to talk about it but she also notices that each one of them has a Christmas jar that they keep on the counter and fill with change.

Soon Hope is in luck and finds the family she believes started the tradition. Now she must wrestle with the idea of writing the story and getting her dream, which is to be published on the first page, or keeping the families tradition a secret.

This was a wonderful book! I stayed up way past my normal bedtime (ha! that makes me sound like a kid) Anyway, I stayed up way past the normal time that I go to sleep because I couldn't' stop reading this book. Towards the end it even made me cry a little. This was a wonderful Christmas story. His website also mentions that it will be turned into a movie in 2008. Boy - I can't wait for that.

(in fact - I happen to have a copy of his next book - The Wednesday Letters - and although I was planning to read it in February around Valentine's day - I don't know if I'll be able wait that long)

new author/fiction/122 pgs