A Christmas Orphan

Two days before Christmas, eons ago in 1962, eleven-year-old Jeff Greenaway overhears his parents having an argument in their New York City apartment. Could it be, as his mother declares sarcastically, that he was "an orphan found on the doorstep in a willow basket?" And are these people who claim to be his mother and father actually imposters? The heartbreaking news propels Jeff into a strange adventure on the verge of the Great Holiday. He sets off for Grand Central Station to find...
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Two days before Christmas, eons ago in 1962, eleven-year-old Jeff Greenaway overhears his parents having an argument in their New York City apartment. Could it be, as his mother declares sarcastically, that he was "an orphan found on the doorstep in a willow basket?" And are these people who claim to be his mother and father actually imposters? The heartbreaking news propels Jeff into a strange adventure on the verge of the Great Holiday. He sets off for Grand Central Station to find the town of Drakesburg, Vermont, inspired by an episode of his favorite TV show, The Twilight Zone--the show that happened to be on when his parents started their quarrel. In Drakesburg, he imagines, with its quaint turn-of-the-century charm and its people full of tender-hearted goodness, he can start life over as an orphan, maybe even find a sympathetic family to adopt him if he promises to milk the cow and take out the garbage. Jeff rides the Holiday Special train north through the night to Vermont, with his baseball mitt and some fresh underwear in his school briefcase, only to discover that the sparkly New England town of television land is not quite the paradise he imagined. The locals in the town diner have never seen anything quite like him, a boy on the run from parents he says were phonies. Jeff makes the rounds of the town's best-looking houses desperately seeking a family that might be interested in adopting an orphan. The results are not quite what he expected. But as twilight settles over the snowy streets on Christmas Eve, fate lands him in the perfect situation, a family with a boy his own age, who even has his own horse! The only complication is that the father is the town sheriff.... James Howard Kunstler's charming, elegiac tale returns us to a time when we all believed we would shape life on our own terms--and reminds us that happiness is still something worth taking a few risks to achieve.