Experience the Happily Ever After

The winner of Missy’s prize is Angela Chesnut. Congratulations, Angela! Now, on to Jean’s Christmas memory.

For me Christmas is family, love and thinking of others. My favorite memory is a combination of two memories many years apart. Our first Christmas as a married couple, my husband and I were struggling college students 3,000 miles away from family and friends. We put out the ceramic manger scene I’d made the summer before and scraped together enough money to buy a real tree. In Los Angeles, the cost at least four times what it would have been in our rural Upstate New York hometowns. Once we had the tree, we didn’t really have any money to decorate it. At a discount store near our apartment, I found boxes of plain red and blue bulbs for fifty-nine or sixty-nine cents and bought one of each color. We decorated our tree Christmas Eve before we went to church to hear the Hallelujah Choir sing. Those red and blue bulbs came home with us to New York and went on our tree in dwindling numbers every year until a few years ago when the last of the red bulbs broke. I still have two blue ones. That Christmas when I opened my gifts, I found that my daughter had searched all over until she’d found bulbs (pictured: original blue and new red and blue ones) that closely matched the ones from our first Christmas in Los Angles. It was one of the best gifts I’ve ever received.

Small-Town Midwife

Autumn Hazard loves being a midwife. But a tragic loss has her doubting the path she’s chosen. And her new boss isn’t helping. She’s worked with Dr. Jonathan Hanlon before, and he’s just as handsome and seemingly perfect as ever. His presence could mean trouble for the clinic—and her sensible heart. Jon remembers Autumn, too. She’s still beautiful, smart and oblivious to him. Maybe that’s for the best—he’s leaving the small town as soon as his training’s done. Besides, he has secrets of his own, and he can’t risk Autumn getting close enough to uncover them. Yet despite all their reservations, working beside each other doesn’t feel like work at all…it feels like home.

Small-Town Midwife Jean C. Gordon

Jean is giving away a copy of her July release Small-Town Mom and a $25 Amazon gift card.

 Jean C. Gordon’s writing is a natural extension of her love of reading. From that day in first grade when she realized t-h-e was the word “the,” she’s been reading everything she can put her hands on. She and her college-sweetheart husband tried the city life in Los Angeles, but quickly returned home to their native Upstate New York. They share a 170-year-old house and farm just south of Albany, NY, with their daughter and son-in-law, two grandchildren, and a menagerie of pets. Their son lives nearby. Her latest “small-town” release is Small-Town Midwife, out in March 2014.

*To be eligible for Jean’s book, you must leave a comment and live within the Continental United States. Winner will be selected using Random.org. The winner will be notified Dec 21 and posted on the sidebar as well.