Hard Candy Christmas

About the Book

Christmas 1997 was the last straw. Linda Simran Harvey went home and wrote "Four Drunks and a Dog." She felt better afterwards, so gradually she wrote about twenty-six more Christmases. The result is a modern Christmas memoir spanning fifty years, from a magical moment in a sad childhood to middle-aged angst, from a Christmas Eve wedding where the guests have misgivings to the gift of peace between two former spouses. In a class by itself is the memory of a perfect Christmas in February. Unfolding throughout the years is a spiritual journey and a saga of adoption loss and reunion, refusing to be neatly resolved. Nor do other relationships always sort themselves out in tidy packets. This is a real life. But along with the failures of Christmas expectations are love and connection with the human and the divine, just not in the perfect way of holiday specials and other people´s annual Christmas letters.

About the Author

The author temporarily lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, looking forward to the Spring 2002 wedding of her only daughter to a wonderful guy. Alaska, the red rock of the Southwest, and Ann Arbor, Michigan continue to call her home from the appalling local congestion (both traffic and allergens). Meanwhile, she enjoys blues jam sessions, marble monuments, art galleries and the opera in Washington, D.C. and deeply appreciates the local spiritual community.

Simran is an adoption reform activist, currently doing research for a book on how siblings are impacted by adoption. If you are an adoptee, birth or adoptive sibling, please contact her if you are interested in sharing your experiences (include email address for reply).