Luanne Rice’s Silver Bells brings romance to the holidays. Christopher Byrne, a Christmas tree seller in Nova Scotia, is still distraught over the disappearance of his only son the previous December, while Manhattan widow Catherine Tierney just can’t let go of her late husband’s memory. Neither one expects a relationship to develop, for each has remained isolated within their own sorrows for so long. Silver Bells is part love story, part familial drama with an extended assortment of characters daughters, friends, bosses and sons. Using the holiday and its often-mystical ways, Rice brings her characters together through circumstances and the coincidences of fate, teaching them what it means to let go of the past and take on the joys of the future.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
