With echoes of classic Hollywood love stories like Serendipity and An Affair to Remember, Viola Shipman’s latest winter charmer following the USA TODAY bestseller The Secret of Snow is sure to tug on heartstrings and delight readers who love books about books, missed connections and the magic of Christmas.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Viola Shipman’s A Wish For Winter, which is out November 15th 2022.
Despite losing her parents in a tragic accident just before her fourteenth Christmas, Susan Norcross has had it better than most, with loving grandparents to raise her and a gang of quirky, devoted friends to support her. Now a successful bookstore owner in a tight-knit Michigan lakeside community, Susan is facing down forty—the same age as her mother when she died—and she can’t help but see everything she hasn’t achieved, including finding a love match of her own. To add to the pressure, everyone in her small town believes it’s Susan’s destiny to meet and marry a man dressed as Santa, just like her mother and grandmother before her. So it seems cosmically unfair that the man she makes an instant connection with at an annual Santa Run is lost in the crowd before she can get his name.
What follows is Susan and her friends’ hilarious and heartwarming search for the mystery Santa—covering twelve months of social media snafus, authors behaving badly and dating fails—as well as a poignant look at family, friendship and what defines a well-lived and well-loved life.
Prologue
Every family has a holiday tradition.
Some families bake sugar cookies and cut them out in the shapes of bells and reindeer, icing them a mile high and decorating them with colored candies and glittery sprinkles.
Other families decorate their trees with heirloom ornaments, telling the stories of where each Shiny Brite originated. Some drench their entire house and yard with lights à la Clark Griswold, while others go caroling or head to midnight mass on Christmas Eve.
The Norcross family dressed as Mr. and Mrs. Claus. Starting the day after Thanksgiving, my parents and grand-
parents became—and I mean this quite literally—the Clauses. 23andMe may have said our family came from somewhere in Europe, but we knew better. We came from the North Pole.
Our blood was made of eggnog, our souls shone as bright as foil wrapping paper and our hearts were filled with Christmas spirit.
In fact, one of my ancestors—my great-great-grandfather—was known as Captain Santa. He operated a three-masted schooner—the sails lit by oil lamps made to look like holiday lights, the masts festooned with garland, the boat a floating forest—that famously sank during the holidays. It had been weighted down by a load of Northern Michigan evergreens bound for Chicago. His nickname had been bestowed on him by Chicago’s newspapers for his generosity in giving the trees to families in need.
The foundation of my family tree has also been hope.
We were so Santa that my grandfather and father had been bestowed the name Nicholas. We were so Kringle that the very first time my mother and grandmother met the loves of their lives both men were dressed as Santa.
They may not have known what they looked like underneath the hat and beard, but they could see his good soul clearly.
My parents and grandparents rotated December days dressing as Mr. and Mrs. Claus, one set going from school to school and hotel to hotel while the other managed our bookstore. I was always the cheery elf in candy cane–striped stockings, a curled cap and a green dress with peppermint buttons, holding a tiny plastic hammer.
I would watch children from all over Northern Michigan crawl upon my dad and grampa’s laps and whisper what they’d like for Christmas.
Every holiday, my family would gather to watch Miracle on 34th Street. It was our tradition.
And every night the week before Christmas, when a Claus would tuck me into bed, he or she would whisper,
“There’s a Single Kringle out there just waiting for you. It’s destiny in our family. And one day you will find your Santa, and every day for the rest of your life—no matter the day of the year— will be as magical as Christmas day.”
And then a Claus would ask, “What is your Christmas wish, Susan?”
I would prattle off a list of toys or dresses, never realizing until too late none of those wishes really mattered.
Today, as an adult, I shut my eyes every night the week leading up to Christmas and before I go to bed silently ask myself, What is your Christmas wish, Susan?
And I whisper to myself, “All I wish is for Christmas to be the way it used to.”
Chapter 2
“You look just like my wife!”
I glance up and scan the sea of Santas.
Everyone looks the same: Kris Kringle in ASICS running shoes.
I’m standing in a throng of mostly drunken revelers-slashrunners—all bedecked in holiday-themed costumes—waiting for Chicago’s famous 10K Santa Run to begin. Many of the twenty- and thirtysomething men are dressed only in Speedos, a tradition in the run, despite the fact that it is spitting snow and the windchill is lower than most of their body fat percentages. But they’ve worked hard to show off their eggnog-free abs and thighs that have never met a snickerdoodle.
However, most runners are dressed as Santa, not only to honor the run’s theme but also to avoid hypothermia.
“Over here!”
I turn, and Santa is waving at me. I glance around. At least, I think he’s waving at me.
This particular Santa is better dressed than the lot, and— believe me—I know my Santa suits. In fact, his costume looks vintage, handmade. The jacket is a rich, dark red velvet, and the white fur trim is not used sparingly: it runs the length and circumference of his jacket, rings his wrists and even outlines the top of his black boots. His gloves are white, and not dingy, and his black belt—even from a distance—looks like real leather, not shiny plastic.
He’s wearing a red velvet cap that falls perfectly over his white hair. His pink lips are curled in a genuinely happy smile behind his long, curly beard. And, unlike so many of the surrounding Santas, I can tell that his bowl full of jelly is all stuffing because…
“That Santa has the best legs I’ve seen all day!” My BFF, Holly.
“He’s hot!” she continues.
Santa is wearing very short running shorts, and his thighs look like they’re carved from marble.
Then I see my image reflected back from the granny glasses perched on the end of my nose.
“I’m not hot,” I say. “I’m dressed as Mrs. Claus.”
“That’s why he’s hitting on you,” Holly says. “He can see what’s underneath all that.”
“He’s Santa,” I say, “not Superman.”
I already know what’s underneath, and it’s not the perfected image of what men prefer these days. I am still blessedly, thankfully, girlishly youthful looking for a woman of forty. I thank the long Michigan winters and years inside a bookstore for keeping my skin largely untarnished by the sun, despite my love of running outdoors. I am alabaster in the summer, a bit ghostly in the winter. I have long, blond hair which I usually keep twisted in a bun or a high pony. Petoskey peeps say I look like my mom, and bookstore shoppers always tend to point a finger toward a popular memoir we carry by Broadway star and TV actress Sutton Foster that features her face on the cover. Both are huge compliments. But when most people compliment me, it’s usually a backhanded one: Man, you look great for your age.
I always wonder what that means. Who sets the standards? I never walk up to a man and say, “Man, you look great for your age.” I usually just gawk at his too-young girlfriend.
“Well, you are a superwoman,” Holly says, knocking me from my thoughts. “Smart, beautiful, sweet, well-read, well-traveled…”
“Well used,” I say. “I’m like that great scarf you find at Goodwill for a dollar.”
“Stop it!” Holly laughs.
“This is my last Santa Run ever,” I say. “This is your final wish. I’ve knocked both off for you in the last few days. I’m done.”
Uh-huh,” she says, rolling her big eyes.
I look at my friend. Holly is what you would call innocently sexy, the thing most men love. She’s Daphne from Bridgerton. She’s breathtakingly beautiful, but it doesn’t come off as threatening to men or women. She’s forty, but no one says she looks good for her age because everyone thinks she’s twenty-seven. I point my gloved finger up and down her body, and I continue. “And how do you know he wasn’t waving at you? I mean, look at you.”
Holly is dressed as a sexy elf. It’s not a stretch from her naughty nurse costume at Halloween, or her cute Cupid at Valentine’s. Holly has always dressed like a Real Housewife at a theme party. Now she gets paid for it. Not only does she handle the website and social media for Sleigh By the Bay, but this is all part of her bigger lifestyle brand, Have A Holly Jolly. She just substitutes the particular holiday depending on the time of the year, and then “teaches” her 1.2 million followers how to decorate their homes, paint their faces, style their homes and hair and, essentially, pay her for doing what she’s done her whole life: Be perfect without really trying. Me— and my bookstore—are always her guinea pigs.
She tried to dress me as a hot leprechaun—in full green body paint—for St. Patrick’s Day last March, and everyone asked me if I had the stomach flu. In honor of today’s run and our family tradition, Holly suggested I pull one of my grandmother’s countless Mrs. Claus costumes from the bookstore closet. I look very maiden aunt compared to Holly’s hotness. Not that I’m the least bit jealous, mind you. Holly is so sweet, she’s basically like divinity candy come to life: spun sugar.
We met in college. She was my freshman roommate, and I hated her that first day. She arrived early, took the bed with the better mattress and the desk by the window overlooking the quad, and had already been rushed by the best sorority on campus. By that night, she had me laughing harder than anyone had in my life. By the end of the week, we were inseparable. We thought we would both be married by now, with big families. Instead, we’re forty, still single and still doing stupid things like the Santa Run. We also thought we would conquer the publishing world. Instead, I now own and run my family’s bookstore, and Holly runs her online empire. Sometimes, I think she got a lot closer to the finish line than I did.
“Wave back!” Holly says, elbowing me in the side.
“Ouch.” I wave.
Santa waves back immediately, and Holly screeches, “Told you!”
“You look just like my wife!” Santa repeats. I laugh and continue waving like an idiot. “Are you Christmas?” he yells.
I shake my head and then lift my hands, not understanding his question.
“Because I want to merry you.”
I groan audibly and immediately turn away. Same line, different Santa.
I’ve already heard them all today:
Shouldn’t you be on top of the tree, Angel?
Hi! Santa said you wished for me. Good choice.
I didn’t think I was a snowman, but you just made my heart melt. “Please make it stop,” I say to Holly. “How drunk and desperate are these guys to hit on women dressed as a kindly grandmother?”
We are lined up on Halstead, in a neighborhood of shops and bars, and I wonder how she talked me into doing this yet again. I can endure the cold, but I can’t endure the searing pain of enduring horrible holiday pickup lines from drunken randos dressed in Christmas costumes. I’ve heard them my whole life, from college to the bookstore.
They say your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body. Wanna fight?
That’s how a fraternity guy once asked me out.
“There’s something wrong with my cell phone,” a summer resorter in Petoskey asked me as I picked up my morning latte.
“Oh, no,” I said.
“Yeah, it doesn’t have your number in it.”
And who could forget these gems from working at the bookstore.
Are you reading Fahrenheit 451? Because, dang girl, you’re smokin’.
Boy, you must be a library book, because I can’t stop checking you out.
If you were a book, I’d need glasses, because you’d definitely be fine print.
I look around for a way to escape, but I’m packed into the street alongside thousands of runners tighter than a can of sardines.
“At least he’s a bit sweeter and more original than the other Santas,” Holly says in her always optimistic tone. “And it’s not like I haven’t used a cheesy line or two on some hot Santas today.”
“No, you use them to ward off weird Santas,” I say. “What was the one you just used at the bar?”
“Why is Christmas just like another day at the office?” Holly says with a laugh. “A woman does all the work, and the fat guy in the suit gets all the credit.”
“Last Santa Run ever!” I say to her. “Why do I even try anymore? Lightning doesn’t strike twice, much less three times. In the winter.”
“Oh, Susan.”
“I think you just want me to find love like this so you can have a post that goes viral.”
“Stop it. Now you’re just being snippy. I didn’t dress you like the Grinch. I asked you to come here and dressed you like Mrs. Claus because your family has such a crazy holiday history at finding love. I mean, think of your parents and grandparents.”
An errant snowflake lands on my lash and melts, mimicking a tear.
“It’s so much easier to stay at home and get these terrible come-on lines online,” I say. “You can just block these creeps without ever seeing them. And be warm. If I had a dime for every cheeseball line I’ve received in my life, I’d be a very rich Mrs. Claus.”
“AH-hhemmm.”
Holly clears her throat dramatically and skews her eyes to the left. I turn. Hot Santa is standing before me.
“Sorry,” he says. “I thought I was being clever. Obviously not.” He extends his hand. “Hi, I’m Santa. But you already knew that.”
I stand motionless. Holly jabs me again. I extend my hand. “Mrs. Claus,” I reply. “And I only work a few days a year.
I negotiated a very good deal.”
“I kind of guessed that already,” he says. “You must have a great boss. Mrs. Claus seems a touch formal, though. Should I call you Gertrude? Or are you new-school Jessica?”
My heart stops. “Excuse me?”
“Sorry,” he says. “My bad again, I guess. I just sort of love everything about Christmas.”
“No,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “I get it. Mrs. Claus was the creation of James Rees in his 1849 book Mysteries of City Life. Rees was the first to name Mrs. Claus as well, calling her Gertrude in his stories, although pop culture has given her the name Jessica.
“Because of the…” I begin, before Santa says at the same time with me, “modern-day, stop-motion holiday special, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.”
We laugh.
Holly is staring at us, open-mouthed.
“Mrs. Claus is introduced as a schoolteacher in the cartoon,” I explain to her. “It’s the first time anyone tried to explain how Kris Kringle ended up meeting and marrying Mrs. Claus.”
“That’s so weird that you both know that,” Holly says. “We elves don’t really get much information besides what the two of you decide to tell us. The North Pole Times isn’t exactly stocked
with news. I just try to stick to the four main food groups— candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup.” Holly extends her hand to Santa. “I’m an elf. That was a line from Elf. See how using a line works? It’s supposed to be sweet, not creepy.”
“This is my best friend, Holly,” I say.
“It’s nice to meet you, Buddy,” Santa says. “Back at’cha, Kris.”
Santa looks at me. For the first time I notice his eyes are the color of the sky behind him: not just blue, but the hue of a snow sky.
As if on cue, it begins to snow in earnest.
“I dialed this up to impress you,” Santa says.
I smile and then blush in the cold. My cheeks feel on fire. “You’re getting better, Santa,” Holly says with a dramatic
wink of a fake glitter lash. “Smile! I want to take an elfie.”
She pulls her phone from the fanny pack cinched around her waist, which looks like a brightly colored peppermint candy. Santa slides his gloved hand around my waist, and my heart hitches. Holly takes the photo, and Santa’s hand trails slowly around my back. My breath catches in my throat. I release it in a big puff that floats in front of my face.
“That’s a keeper!” Holly says, reviewing the shot in her screen.
In the near distance, bells ring, signaling the race is about to start.
“I’m going to get a few more before the race starts,” Holly says. “Be back in a sec.”
Santa keeps his arm around my waist. He is taller than me, a rare thing considering my height of nearly five-feet-eleven-inches. He turns me a few degrees until I’m facing him, and his eyes fix on the Christmas pin I’m wearing on the fur lapel of my Mrs. Claus coat.
“That’s so beautiful,” he says. “It looks like it has a history.
Was it your mother’s?” My heart balloons. How would he know that?
I touch the pin. It’s a red-and-green bejeweled angel, blowing a golden trumpet. I can picture my mother standing in church singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” I can picture my mother being greeted into heaven by a fleet of angels trumpeting her arrival.
My mother is my guardian angel.
“Thank you,” I say. “It does have a history.” I hesitate. “It was my mother’s, the one she wore on her Mrs. Claus costume every year.”
“Was?” he asks, his voice low. “I’m so sorry.” “Thanks.”
“It’s strange, but I feel like we already know each other,” Santa says. “And that’s not a line. It’s like we have some sort of connection, a history, just like with your pin.”
It sounds like another cheesy line, but he’s right: this man seems as familiar as a favorite blanket. Suddenly, a sleigh filled with waving Santas pulled by a team of runners parts the crowd. The crowd buzzes.
“Runners, take your marks!” a voice echoes. “What’s your name?” Santa asks me.
I open my mouth to answer, but before I can reply a big bell chimes to start the race, echoing in the cold air. A crush of people surges forward, and Santa is swept away.
“Meet me at O’Malley’s!” I hear him exclaim as he is carried out of sight.
Holly returns in the St. Nick of time, grabs my hand, and we run next to one another until the crowd of runners thins, and we have the street to ourselves.
“What just happened?” she says, her eyes wide. “I knew it!
This is your miracle on 34th Street!” “You mean, on Halstead Street?”
“Everything has led up to this moment,” she gushes. “Every snowflake, every kiss, every bad line, every Cletus, every bad date, every Christmas alone! Santa’s been waiting, just like he was for your mom and grandma.”
