Real Santa

This sometimes humorous and often maudlin yuletide novel from Hazelgrove (The Pitcher) concerns an exuberant father going all out to prove to his young daughter that Santa Claus is a real entity. Fifty-year-old George Kronenfeldt, a dogged bridge engineer living in Chicago, has been laid off 12 days before Christmas. More trouble follows when George learns his nine-year-old daughter, Megan, has serious doubts about Santa Claus. Rather than do the grown-up thing and admit Saint Nick is a myth, George decides to organize an elaborate hoax on Christmas Eve. George is also driven by the guilt he suffers from neglecting his children, although his spoiled son, Jeremy, and other daughter, Jamie, are almost adults. His patient wife, Mary, goes along with George’s big idea as he recruits his father, Kronenfeldt Sr., and Dean Sanders, a journeyman Australian movie director who likes to shout the exclamation “stupendous,” into the masquerade. Finally, George rents nine flatulent reindeers from Big Bill McGruff, and Mary’s patience finally runs out when her husband runs up a debt to the tune of a hundred grand to finance the spectacle. Meantime, George’s nemesis, Mrs. Barbara Worthington, who is Megan’s 70-year-old schoolteacher, delights in crushing her students’s joyful anticipation of Father Christmas. Hazelgrove’s lively, improbable narrative will appeal to the readers in the mood for holiday fiction. (Oct.)