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Mr. Ives' Christmas  By  cover art

Mr. Ives' Christmas

By: Oscar Hijuelos, Mary Gordon - foreword
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Publisher's summary

Hailed “the deepest and the best” of Pulitzer-Prize winning author Oscar Hijuelos’s novels, this acclaimed national bestseller examines faith lost and regained after a businessman’s son violently dies at Christmas (New York Times Book Review).

In 1960s New York, Edward Ives is a picture of the American dream. Adopted as a child by a widowed print shop manager, who helped him cultivate a love of drawing, he now has a successful career as an illustrator in advertising, a beautiful home with his wife and muse, Annie, and two loving children. But this idyllic life is brutally wrenched away when Ives’s 17-year-old son, Robert—who has just decided to commit his life to the priesthood—is murdered by another teenage boy just before Christmas, a crime of opportunity that proves to be as random as it is senseless.

Consumed by grief, Ives withdraws from the world. Grappling with a loss of faith—a force that has guided him steadfastly since childhood—he starts to question every aspect of human existence, contemplating what it really means to live an emotionally and spiritually fulfilling life. This mourning consumes him—until he takes on the monumental task of working through his suffering, and ultimately faces his son's killer.

Mr. Ives' Christmas is a tender, passionate story of a man working to rediscover what it means to love, forgive, and live after unspeakable tragedy. It is another tremendous achievement from one of America’s most talented writers.

Includes a Reading Group Guide.

©2024 Oscar Hijuelos, Mary Gordon (P)2024 Grand Central Publishing

Critic reviews

"Dickens himself, mentioned frequently in the narrative, haunts it like the Ghost of Christmas Past, but Mr. Hijuelos transcends his model even as he embraces him . . . The shortest of Oscar Hijuelos's recent novels, ''Mr. Ives' Christmas'' is in my judgment both the deepest and the best."—New York Times

"A new classic for a new age, a bracing reminder of the difference between love and romance, from a writer whose gifts I admire and, maybe, envy."—NPR
"It is significant that Mr. Ives's most prized possession is a signed edition of Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Hijuelos, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of Cuban exile, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, breathes new life into the Victorian Christmas genre. Highly recommended."—Library Journal

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