Family Portrait

When a young patient grieving the death of her sister recognizes the man in a portrait hanging in her office, Dr. Kate Harding, an art therapist, is startled but not entirely surprised. The face in the painting takes her back twenty years to snow-covered Cedar Point, Kentucky, and to her first Christmas without her mother. As Christmas approached, John Harding, his daughter, Kate, and son, Chesler, were struggling to adjust to life's changes after the September death of his wife and their mother. When a conversation with Granny Grace convinced Kate that there was Christmas in heaven, she was determined to get her mother a present, a special gift that would make her mother happy forever. No one could tell Kate how to get her gift to heaven-not her daddy, not Uncle Luke the medical student, not Aunt Susannah Hope, and not even Pastor Simmons who she was most certain would have the answer. But Kate devises and executes a Christmas Eve plan that changes her life. Kate's Christmas is filled with surprises-taking in a runaway girl who had no mother, a tender exchange of Christmas presents, a meeting with Mister Josh, and finally, an astonishing family Christmas portrait.

When overwhelmed with growing up without Mama, will young Kate survive? As Kate's eleventh birthday approaches, she fears no one will remember her tradition of dressing up in her mother's heirloom wedding gown for her birthday portrait. She grieves that their handprints won't be on the back of the birthday photograph, and there'll be no special letter from her mother to go in her Book of My Life this year. Precocious Kate gets a few more life's-not-always-fair lessons as she struggles and finds the courage to ask the hard questions about life. A divinely-appointed encounter with the mysterious and elusive Mr. Josh aids in her dilemma but requires of her an innocent faith that will satisfy her deepest questions, will raise a few more, and will change her life forever. Kate's story is the story of a family-a story blending joy and sorrow, death and new life, the joys and hope that children bring, the wisdom elders offer, the value of family traditions, and the mystery of life that remains unanswered.