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A collection of winter tales

From award-winning columnist, Lorraine Ahearn, the best of “Winter People.”

 

Out of Greensboro, North Carolina, the city that inspired young pharmacist Will Porter to sketch his soda fountain patrons — before changing his name to O. Henry and penning “The Gift of the Magi” — emerges a true-to-life collection of winter stories a century later.

 

In the footsteps of veteran newspaper columnist Lorraine Ahearn, we shadow stranger-than-fiction characters in the wee hours of their lives. An Oxford-trained professor of physics wanders the sidewalks holding a mysterious box. A retiring homicide cop works his final shift on New Year’s Eve, leaving a last, cold case. Foundlings shiver under stairwells. Soldiers, homesick on Christmas, take shelter in a manger. An unrepentant street hustler, “Johnny Blaze,” lands in the hospital with a bullet to the spine. A recovered alcoholic, “Big George,” hauls the city’s 38-foot Christmas tree down a frozen mountain. An Irish nun, Sister Gabriel, dies on the shortest day of the year, but she does not go alone.

 

Finally, in the last place anyone shops for the unexpected — a suburban mall — an unemployed nuclear power plant foreman answers an ad for a “Santa Wanted.” And by some strange alchemy, he puts on the red suit and becomes the genuine article.

 

Like the toys Santa slings in a sack over his back, each sketch in Ahearn’s collection is a tidily wrapped present. As deft and understated as the accompanying pen-and-ink scenes by acclaimed illustrator John Hitchcock, these stories rekindle a season’s transformative magic — treasure misplaced under the wrapping paper and bows.