Book Report: Gideon’s Gift by Karen Kingsbury (2002)

I don’t know where I came up with this book–I have three such titles in the Red Gloves series, which is not a series with the same characters but rather different Christmas-themed books which Kingsbury wrote to raise money for some charitable organization. After a Christmas-themed trivia night where we led all night only to lose in the final round to a team using “mulligans” for free points (which we do not as we are trivia night purists), I thought I would pick this book up for my Christmas novel this year since I knew where it was–atop the bookshelves in the office.

So: Earl was a family man who enjoyed Christmas with his wife and daughter and his parents and siblings, but he was not a believer. His wife and daughter are killed on their way to or from church, and Earl goes into a downward spiral until he’s homeless for five years when the book begins. He’s trying to be heartless, and the only things he cares about are the red gloves his wife made him (I get the sense red gloves are a motif that all the books will share). When they’re stolen, Earl starts thinking about ending it all.

Meanwhile, Gideon is an eight-year-old girl living with leukemia whose parents are living hand-to-mouth. The mother is working two jobs, and the father is only getting 12 hours a week at “the mill,” but that allows him to take his daughter to the doctor and whatnot. Gideon goes into remission long enough to move the plot forward, which is that she wants to help serve at “the mission” (her parents volunteer a lot even though they’re poor). Where she meets Earl and wants to make him believe again, so she gives him a present which he eventually opens–and it’s the red gloves! Which she bought at a second hand shop since the thief sold them or something?

At any rate, she gets sick again, and it’s dire, but Earl believes now, and it turns out he’s a rich homeless man who pays for her bone marrow transplant and reconciles with his family. And finis!

Oh, and the book has a wrapper story thirteen years later at Gideon’s wedding, so a lot of possible suspense is lost. But I guess you’re not reading this for suspense.

So it was a quick read–I ploughed through the 146 pages in an evening–but.

I mean, it’s not my first Christmas novel, so I know to expect a bit of unreality, some magic or divine intervention, but this book, this short story or novella, really, made me raise my eyebrow. I mean, the experience of the homeless guy–let’s be honest, I can too easily picture myself in that situation, as the whole year I have known my job situation was tenuous and my continued employability questionable and knowledge of the cash flow situation led me to conclude that if I lost my wife and kids and job, I would be in a perilous situation indeed–but this homeless guy has both his parents alive in a single household and one or more siblings, and he has a big payout from the accident that claimed his wife and kid, and he lived with his parents for a while after, but then he gave that all up to just live on the streets in a different city. I mean, that seems…. contrived. I don’t know. Perhaps I was just disappointed in the character whose path to homelessness did not involve having no money and no family.

Also, the father is only working 12 hours a week at “the mill”? What is he doing there, and what kind of shift or shifts is that? A single twelve hour shift? Two sixes? Is he a part time janitor or food service worker? It just clangs.

And the remission of the little girl lasting just long enough to make the events of the book happen…. Eh.

I get the sense that I am going to be harsher on these books than others–I’ve already started the next one I have of the series, and I’ve already encountered my first Oh, really? in the first chapter. But my beautiful wife, who has read many Karen Kingsbury books, asked me if this was the one with the homeless guy and said it was not one of her better books. So after ploughing through these three Christmas novellas, I won’t necessarily shun any other Kingsbury books I find on my to-read shelves. Unless the next two are also rather Oh, really?