This holiday
season is unusual in that it brings three new Hector Lassiter offerings with significant
Christmas connections.
Earlier this
month, we released the new Hector Lassiter novel, The Running Kind, which
is set in December 1950 in the aftermath of a historic (and killer) snowstorm
that has become known as “the Great Appalachian Storm of November 1950.”
That year, Ohio,
the setting for much of the action of The
Running Kind, achieved some records of the kind you really don’t want to
set. As described on the Wikipedia page dedicated to the storm:
“…nearly a foot of snow fell on
Dayton, Ohio, which combined with the wind and cold temperatures, became their
worst blizzard on record. Nearly the entire state was blanketed with 10 inches,
with 20-30 inches being measured in eastern sections of Ohio. Snow drifts
were up to 25 feet deep…”
It is against this icy backdrop,
and the looming Christmas holiday, that The
Running Kind opens. Before now, we haven’t had much insight into a Hector
Lassiter-style Christmas, but The Running
Kind gives some bittersweet sense of
how an aging bachelor like Hector weathers what is generally regarded as a
family holiday.
As it happens, another work that
debuted earlier this year, the Lassiter novel Forever’s Just Pretend, opens on Christmas Eve, 1924. We see future
Mrs. Lassiter, Brinke Devlin, spending a solitary holiday writing in a Key West
bar, while a continent away, Hector and Ernest Hemingway are drinking and
celebrating as Hector prepares to close out his life in West Bank Paris to join
Miss Devlin in Florida.
As to that third Christmas-Lassiter
work that’s available? It’s far more of a rarity. Betimes Books, which is now bringing
you the Hector Lassiter series, has released a short story collection of
Christmas tales called Gifts, which
is still available in collectible paperback for a short time more.
The collection contains a newly
repackaged vignette from my novel Print the Legend, which Betimes will reprint next year. The short piece is a chapter
that visits Hemingway and Hector on the Christmas morning immediately following
the Christmas Eve that opens Forever’s
Just Pretend.
I hope you’ll consider celebrating
a little Christmas time “cheer” with Mr. Lassiter in the days to come, and please
have yourself a safe and happy Christmas.
—Craig McDonald
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