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A review by ncrabb
Time For Me to Come Home by Dorothy Shackleford
5.0
This review begs the question is there a bad time to read a Christmas book? Obviously, I don't think so. I write this on Valentine's Day Eve. Yet, here I am, writing about a Christmas book. The Hallmark Channel introduced me do this book, interestingly enough. I first saw it as one of the ubiquitous Hallmark Channel Christmas movies that was first Recorded and then replayed in my house during the holiday season. Despite the lack of audio description, (shame, a thousand shames, on the Hallmark Channel), I found the movie engaging and fun and uplifting during the holidays. My wife read on the screen that it was based on a book. I went scrambling for the book. I founded it on Bookshare. I read it today. It's tiny. If you have a thing about not reading Christmas books except in December, I don't know how to help you. But this really is quick, and it's fun, and you won't regret it if you started.
Heath Sawyer has it made! He has just finished a successful concert tour with a windup at Madison Square Garden. He is a country music superstar by every measure. He hasn't been home to Okmulgee, Oklahoma since his dad died. That was some six months earlier. Now his mom and sisters are pestering him to come home for Christmas. He has all the money a young guy can use. he could easily spend Christmas in a tropical place, just hanging out by himself. He toys with the idea initially. But there something about the urgency in his mothers voice that draws him home. There's something about the quiet disenchantment he seems to feel with the music industry that draws him home. And there something about Cara Hill, whom he encounters in the airport, that makes him feel he's already at home.
it's a snowy December 23rd in New York City. The Weather Channel is all abuzz with talk of a massive nasty storm that will ground flights everywhere. Sawyer hits the bathroom before boarding his flight to O'Hare. That's when she bursts in. Clearly the author wrote this before the days of nongender-specific bathrooms. The young woman has a rather noticeable coffee stain on her clothes, and she attempts to cover it with the ugliest Christmas sweater Sawyer has ever seen. She is Cara Hill, and she is decidedly not a devotee of country music. As a result, she has no idea who Sawyer is. That's a real switch for a guy who is all-too-often drunk on fame and self medicating on alcohol as a result of his dad's death from cancer six months earlier.
Cara lives in Tulsa, and she's no more interested in going home than Heath is. But home calls her, too, and ever-so-reluctantly, the two set out.
The trip to O'Hare is relatively uneventful. But things get decidedly more difficult and bizarre from there. In scenes that are reminiscent of "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," Sawyer and Cara have their share of misadventures and tear-jerking moments with a delightful young family who remind them both of the things that matter most.
As I write this in mid-February, my Amazon smart speaker is obligingly playing the "Holiday Traditions" channel from Sirius/XM. Yeah, it's still available, and it added much to the ambience that helps craft a review of a Christmas book.
Heath Sawyer has it made! He has just finished a successful concert tour with a windup at Madison Square Garden. He is a country music superstar by every measure. He hasn't been home to Okmulgee, Oklahoma since his dad died. That was some six months earlier. Now his mom and sisters are pestering him to come home for Christmas. He has all the money a young guy can use. he could easily spend Christmas in a tropical place, just hanging out by himself. He toys with the idea initially. But there something about the urgency in his mothers voice that draws him home. There's something about the quiet disenchantment he seems to feel with the music industry that draws him home. And there something about Cara Hill, whom he encounters in the airport, that makes him feel he's already at home.
it's a snowy December 23rd in New York City. The Weather Channel is all abuzz with talk of a massive nasty storm that will ground flights everywhere. Sawyer hits the bathroom before boarding his flight to O'Hare. That's when she bursts in. Clearly the author wrote this before the days of nongender-specific bathrooms. The young woman has a rather noticeable coffee stain on her clothes, and she attempts to cover it with the ugliest Christmas sweater Sawyer has ever seen. She is Cara Hill, and she is decidedly not a devotee of country music. As a result, she has no idea who Sawyer is. That's a real switch for a guy who is all-too-often drunk on fame and self medicating on alcohol as a result of his dad's death from cancer six months earlier.
Cara lives in Tulsa, and she's no more interested in going home than Heath is. But home calls her, too, and ever-so-reluctantly, the two set out.
The trip to O'Hare is relatively uneventful. But things get decidedly more difficult and bizarre from there. In scenes that are reminiscent of "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," Sawyer and Cara have their share of misadventures and tear-jerking moments with a delightful young family who remind them both of the things that matter most.
As I write this in mid-February, my Amazon smart speaker is obligingly playing the "Holiday Traditions" channel from Sirius/XM. Yeah, it's still available, and it added much to the ambience that helps craft a review of a Christmas book.