Title: Christmas Kringle
Author: Danni Roan
Quote: "Are you sure the damsel really needed rescuing?"
Some time a long time ago, in the woods above a very small town in what might have been Pennsylvania, Sara fell out of a tree she was climbing to cut out the top for a Christmas decoration. The handsome neighbor boy rushed to help her stand up. She wasn't hurt but, living with a mother and sisters but no father, enjoyed the unfamiliar sensation of being close to a male body. The boy and girl were neighbors but lived on large enough farms that they hardly recognized each other. They immediately fell "in love." But her mother and his father hated each other.
They did some sneaking around and kissing before an old lady in the village below, called Polly Esther (the author says she really had an elder called that), started to tell all the children at the Christmas service the story of Romeo and Juliet, but hastily censored its tragic ending down to some ridiculous twaddle about "they decided to work for the good of the town."
This is not historical fiction. The old lady is actually referred to as "Ms." Polly Esther. "Ms." was first used in the 1970s, though, to be fair, before that time some people might have pronounced "Miss" or "Mrs." like " Miz" Esther...but this was a dialectal variant based on sound not spelling, and it would have sounded like "Miss" Polly. "Ms.," in a context of long skirts and villages, is an anachronism but it's never quite clear whether this story is set in the 1920s, when country people still thought decency required dresses to be long, or the 1820s. This is pure fantasy set in some alternative world whose years are probably numbered "Oldtimey, or Circa Before Present." The anachronisms, however, supply the otherwise missing element of suspense. You know how a sweet romance ends.
I can't give it any points for historical research but this is a sweet romance with a whte Christmas in it.
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