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To outsiders, Appleville, New Hampshire, is a storybook small town complete with a little white church and a gazebo on the village green. To Gincy Gannon Luongo, it was a place to escape from as quickly as she could. Since she moved away twenty years ago, Appleville has been her hometown in name only. But at her brother Tommy's urging, Gincy is coming back to visit their recently widowed mother in the weeks leading up to Christmas--and she's bringing her teenage daughter, Tamsin, with her.

Ellen Gannon, once feisty and strong-willed, is mired in depression. Tommy isn't doing much better. Gincy starts restoring order to the household in her usual practical way, but it's clear that imagined slights and lingering resentments have created deep chasms between them all. With each day, she realizes she has seriously undervalued her mother and her brother. Only now, with the support of her husband, daughter, and best friends, does she see how much she may have missed. For beyond the surface of every family and every picturesque town is something more complicated but infinitely more rewarding--a tapestry of those small acts of acceptance, love, and loyalty that could transform this Christmas into the best Gincy's ever known.