My friend, Laurie Wood, shares her Christmas story…
Northern Hearts (Heroes of the Tundra Book 2) is my Christmas novella set in the real-life town of Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. It’s called the Polar Bear Capitol of the World. I set my entire series there, and my husband and I flew up in 2019 so that I could do proper research on the town and its polar bear research facilities.
I set this story during the Christmas in between Northern Deception (Book 1) and Northern Protector (Book 3). The inspiration for the story came to me out of the blue—I love it when my brain and creativity strikes like that—because I was thinking about family situations and secrets.
I had the vision of a rich young woman with every advantage she could have in her life, but still yearning for more. And her family held a long, dark secret in the past. She’s about to find out about a family member she had never known existed before, and how that person had been following her life from afar.
The hero is the opposite. He’s grown up without a proper family in the foster care system and the unknown family member of the heroine has been a stand-in mother figure for him. When the hero and heroine meet and are forced to work together for thirty days to meet the legal requirements of the family member’s will, they have to examine what their relationships mean to them and learn to work together.
Being a romance novella, they will fall in love, but I include some real-life festivities that take place in Churchill and some traditions that I wish I’d done myself over the years. I believe that family traditions keep memories alive and serve the purpose of keeping families intact, especially when children are young and growing up. Once they’re grown up, some traditions need to change to facilitate the changes in the family make-up, for example, adult children marrying and the “family” enlarging.
Like the Sabbath being made for man, not man for the Sabbath, as Jesus taught us, I think that family traditions such as every person being present at Christmas dinner when that may not be feasible, need to be looked at in the light of love and common sense. Christmas dinners may need to be done rotationally. Traditions may need to grow and change as the years go by.
That doesn’t mean that our Christmas excitement and celebrations of our one true King shouldn’t take place or be enjoyed. They just may look different from year to year, and that’s all right. The true meaning of Christmas is that Jesus is the Light of the World and our Saviour. I wish you all a blessed Christmas!
If you visit my website at https://www.lauriewoodauthor.com and sign up for my newsletter, you’ll receive a gift. Thank you for being with me today.
You can buy Northern Hearts here: https://amzn.to/33CFJeE Northern Redemption (Heroes of the Tundra Book 4) will come out in 2023.
Laurie Wood has followed her RCAF-serving husband across Canada, raising their two special needs children to adulthood while she began her writing career. She’s a member of Sisters in Crime International and SinC Canada West, as well as Faith, Hope & Love Christian Writers.
Laurie writes both romantic suspense and historical novels and is currently working on her next book.
You can connect with her at her website.
