Garrison Keillor. A Christmas Blizzard (2009)

     Garrison Keillor. A Christmas Blizzard (2009) James Sparrow hates Christmas; his wife Joyce loves the season and the feast. Sparrow flies to N. Dakota because his uncle’s health is failing. There a blizzard prevents his return to Minneapolis, so he spends some time in an ice fishing hut. He’s visited by various visions, or maybe angels, or maybe ghosts, which, like Scrooge’s Marley, teach him to be a more tolerant and loving human being. They also tell him that his wife is pregnant, which is something of a miracle after many years of marriage. So all’s well.
     Garrison Keillor is a wonderful story teller. This novel is very like his News From Lake Wobegon in tone and structure. He rambles, and it seems the story is about to get away from him and end up nowhere in particular, but like a walk in the bush on a winter’s night it bends back to where it started, a place that has changed in unexpected ways. Or perhaps it’s we who have changed, and see the old familiar places as the miracles they are. Worth another read. ***½