Category: Drama Publisher: Focus House Publishing
ISBN-10: 097266260X
Type: Fiction
Pages: 180
Copyright: 2002
ISBN-13: 9780972662604
A homeless man's journey from despair back to life and Christmas. Secrets revealed lead to an emotional and magical holiday. The perfect present: hope between two covers. .
Skip Ralstat is a man so steeped in grief and despair that life seems no longer possible. After the death of his wife and child, Skip blames himself. He has given up his friends, his job, and even his home. Now, homeless, he survives on the mean streets of Albany. He knows it can't go on, that life must end. But will it.
Come join him on his most unusual road to redemption. The salvation of one life...lies along this road.
Let the healing from "The Santa Shop" begin.
Come laugh and cry with “Maine’s Other Author”(TM), the master of emotional stories—Tim Greaton.
Excerpt
The scene was so clear, so horrifying, that I knew I could and would go through with this. I owed them that much. I owed them retribution for my failure to be there. I owed them my life.
I leaned out heavily and looked down into the ravine. Though a partial moon was out, its light was unable to penetrate all the way to the ice and water that I could hear swirling angrily below.
I stepped onto the lowest rung of the railing and grabbed hold of a large, vertical, steel sup-port. The ice-cold rivets burned like hot but-tons in my palm. There was a second horizon¬tal bar above the first. And above that was the railing itself. Perfect, really, for this sort of activity, like a small ladder of death.
I took two deep breaths and lifted my other foot onto the bottom rung. I could feel the fear leaching out of me like an excised demon. In
moments, my thoughts fell silent. I was an empty husk. Maybe the life, the very soul of me had already fled. Maybe all that was left was this useless, guilty body that had only one last job to do.
I held tight to the cold support and lifted my right foot to the second rung. Wind whipped across the bridge, threatening to hurl me forward into the lecherous maw of the ravine. For a fraction of a second, terror reared up inside me again. I threw my weight back against the gale and held on with a clamp-like grip, one hand on the rail and the other on the higher support.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the wind died down again. My fear subsided but it took a while longer for my hands to relax their strangleholds on the steel. Feeling ridiculous, I hung there, half on, half off the bridge. Suddenly, the debating team returned to its task. Arguments in defense of my life swelled and roared in a chaotic swirl. I knew I was ready for this, ready to pay my penance, but still I clung to life.
I forced a vision of Tabitha and Derek upon myself again. I saw their deaths in the smoke and their dual caskets. I imagined Tabby, impatient and accusatory in her death. The debating team fled again, unable to function with the obvious gilt of the blood I had caused right before them. Finally, once again, my mind fell silent.
Now was the time to jump.
Now!
Taking one last gulp of brutally cold air, I took another step up the rail. I faced the ravine and flexed my legs for the final two steps that would carry me into oblivion.
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Reviews for "The Santa Shop (book 1 in the Santa Conspiracy)"
Rovella is a beautiful woman with a cold heart whom blames herself for an unfortunate old family secret that is literally ruining her life. This secret impedes a gorgeous woman from having happiness in her childhood, and throughout her life. Dark sec
