Christmas Bells: A Novel

I heard the bells on Christmas Day / Their outdated acquainted carols play / And wild and candy / The phrases repeat / Of peace on earth, good-will to males!

 

In 1860, the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow household celebrated Christmas at Craigie Home, their house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The publication of Longfellow’s basic Revolutionary Struggle poem, “Paul Revere’s Journey,” was lower than a month therefore, and the nation’s grave political unrest weighed closely on his thoughts. But along with his beloved spouse, Fanny, and their 5 adored youngsters at his facet, the delights of the season prevailed.

In present-day Boston, a devoted trainer within the Watertown public college system is surprised by somber vacation tidings. Sophia’s music program has been sacrificed to price range cuts, and she or he worries not solely about her impending unemployment but in addition in regards to the penalties to her underprivileged college students. On the church the place she volunteers as music director, Sophia tries to overlook her cares as she leads the youngsters’s choir in rehearsal for a Christmas Eve live performance. Impressed to honor an area artist, Sophia has chosen a carol set to a poem by Longfellow, moved by the wonderful phrases he penned one Christmas Day way back, at the same time as he suffered nice loss.

Christmas Bells chronicles the occasions of 1863, when the peace and contentment of Longfellow’s household circle was all of the sudden, tragically damaged, reducing even deeper than the privations of wartime. Via the ache of profound loss and hardship, Longfellow’s patriotism by no means failed, nor did the ability of his language. “Christmas Bells,” the poem he wrote that vacation, lives on, spoken as verse and sung as a hymn. 

Jennifer Chiaverini’s resonant and heartfelt novel for the season reminds us why we should proceed to listen to glad tidings, at the same time as we’re examined by strife. Studying 
Christmas Bells evokes the resplendent pleasure of a refrain of voices raised in reverent music.