A01=Lee Smith
american women
Author_Lee Smith
Category=FB
Category=FBA
celebrate who we are
disappointments
down home story
dreams
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
family
female stories
friends
generations
holidays
hopes
important
in a letter of her own
inspiration
letters
marriage
read between the lines
relatives
shared experiences
shared recipes
stories about women
stories of love
story of a life
three generations
tradition
women
Product details
- ISBN 9781565123762
- Weight: 140g
- Dimensions: 122 x 178mm
- Publication Date: 19 Aug 2002
- Publisher: Workman Publishing
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In The Christmas Letters, three generations of women reveal their stories of love and marriage in the letters they write to family and friends during the holidays. It's a down-home Christmas story about tradition, family, and the shared experiences of women.Here, in a letter of her own, Lee Smith explains how she was inspired to write this celebrated epistolary novel:Dear Friends,Like me, you probably get Christmas letters every year. I read every word and save every letter. Because every Christmas letter is the story of a life, and what story can be more interesting than the story of our lives? Often, it is the story of an entire family. But you also have to read between the lines with Christmas letters. Sometimes, what is not said is even more important than what is on the page.In The Christmas Letters, I have used this familiar format to illumine the lives, hopes, dreams, and disappointments of three generations of American women. Much of the story of The Christmas Letters is also told through shared recipes. As Mary, my favorite character, says, "I feel as if I have written out my life story in recipes! The Cool Whip and mushroom soup years, the hibachi and fondue period, then the quiche and crepes phase, and now it's these salsa years."I wrote this little book for the same reason I write to my friends and relatives every holiday--Christmas letters give us a chance to remember and celebrate who we are.With warmest greetings, Lee Smith
Lee Smith is the author of fourteen novels, including Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History, Saving Grace, and Guests on Earth, as well as four collections of short stories, including Me and My Baby View the Eclipse and News of the Spirit. Her novel The Last Girls was a New York Times bestseller as well as a co-winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. A retired professor of English at North Carolina State University, she has received an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Literature.
