Finding Christmasville — Michael Matthew Dutton

If Mary Jane was motivated by faith, a spirit of independence and the quest for truth in the first novel of the trilogy, Madeleine and Esmeralda are driven by purposes quite different in the second. For both girls it is the embracing of hope - of salvation for Madeleine, and illumination for Esmeralda - that propels them along their parallel paths. Madeleine, a daughter of the Magian line, is bequeathed CALINDA AL EMERIS MAGUS - the rare "gift of the Fourth king" - which enables her to perceive what others cannot. But, as with many gifts, there are prices for such things. The bloom of a rose, or the fruit of a tree, does not come without the promise of a thorn, or the threat of blight. For Esmeralda, the fortuneteller who once read Tarot cards for Mary Jane, the journey forward is impeded by that affliction which haunts everyone who calls Christmasville home: memory - the multiple perforations of memory, which prevent her from summoning images of her long lost father, her mother, her brother Oscar...and of what became of them all. For the astute reader - the reader who discovered in Christmasville a confirmation of that sometimes elusive, though always enduring virtue of faith - Finding Christmasville will be a journey of illumination, an epiphany, a celebration in that most wondrous and fragile of human aspirations: hope.