This is a book that surprised me. I'm glad I gave it a chance. Following the feasts of Christmas, the author imagines the reactions of characters who encountered the Holy Family at the first Christmas. This is done in narrative, free form poems which usually are the sort of thing that I don't like, but the author makes the voices real enough that they just read like stories.
What I really enjoyed was the different characters like the camel driver for the wise men, the innkeeper's daughter or the drifter. Each one we meet has been drawn in by Mary's smile or Joseph's eyes or the baby, of course. Occasionally, we encounter a character further on as a peripheral figure in someone else's story, which caused me a delightful jolt of recognition. There are some memories from Mary and Joseph as well, which also pleased me because they weren't the sort of sentimental material that I usually avoid. They felt genuine.
That's how this whole book feels — genuine. It pulls us into the Christ child's story in a way I hadn't come across before. Recommended.
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