cover image Christmas in Calico

Christmas in Calico

Jack Curtis. Rodale Press, $14.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-87596-543-7

A veteran writer of TV westerns and 18 previous novels, Curtis (The Kloochman) sets this appealing blend of the nativity story and Dickens's A Christmas Carol in a Nevada landscape about 100 years ago. Brave and feisty widow Rose Cameron (""her face honest as a looking glass"") leaves her failing ranch in a howling blizzard to find medical attention for her sick son, Tommy. Ever since her husband died eight months ago, Rose has been trying to keep the Circle C ranch solvent, but a severe drought has depressed the region, drying up everyone's land, money and the milk of human kindness. Rather than offer their assistance, the predatory ranchers whose acreage abuts the Circle C have done their best to cheat Rose and hasten foreclosure. When Rose and Tommy arrive in the nearby town of Calico, they are refused shelter by the hardhearted banker, hotel owner and pastor; only the denizens of shacktown offer food, a room and hospitality. Then banker Max Gotch convinces desperate Rose to sign away her rights to the ranch. All seems lost--but wait! Joel Reese, a cowhand and drifter with ""honest eyes and courteous virility"" will be Rose's savior. Curtis stacks his cards blatantly and herds stereotypes into the narrative: the prostitute with a heart of gold; the Scrooge-like banker who has a vision and miraculously changes his ways; the baby born on Christmas Eve. But his sentimental story gains color from homespun dialogue rendered with a Western twang, and its earnest message of compassion for the less fortunate gives his predictable plot a satisfying holiday moral. $35,000 ad/promo. Agent, Mildred Marmur. (Nov.) FYI: Rodale is issuing Christmas in Calico as its first book of fiction.