Cape Light Christmas

We hope you enjoyed reading about the Cape Light series, it ties in with today’s post about Cape Light Christmas!

After the first four books in the Cape Light series we are invited back to visit each year at Christmas starting with A Christmas Promise.  Reverened Ben Lewis has a good friend also a minister, James Cameron.  James has taken a leave from his missionary work in Central America due to an illness and is spending the holidays in Cape Light.  On his way into town he runs into Leigh Baxter’s car.  Leigh is on the run hiding from an abusive husband.  Leigh is forced to stay in town. James reaches out to her but how will he react when he finds out her secret?

Jessica and Sam Morgan want a child and it is not as easy as they imagined it would be.  Christmas is not the joy they would like it to be as they struggle with their options.

Churches, towns, and homeowners across the country put up nativity scenes in their yards each year.  Many leave the baby Jesus out until Christmas Eve night so it is a surprise and shock to all when a baby is found in the cradle in Cape Light.  Emily takes the child in until someone else can be found to care for her.  The little girl reaches out and grabs Emily’s heart only partially healed from reuniting with the daughter she gave away so many years before.  She sees this as her second chance at motherhood, but her husband Dan wants nothing to do with babies.  He raised his children, he’s done.  It’s shaping up to be a very tense Christmas at their house with The Christmas Angel.

I think the third Cape Light Christmas book is my favorite.  In A Christmas to Remember we finally get to see behind the veil so to speak with Lillian Warwick.  We get a glimpse of her life long ago.  Lillian has been confined to bed with pneumonia and while she’s there she drifts back to 1955 when she first met her husband Oliver.  Seeing how Lillian was raised is an eye-opener, it makes it much easier to see her as a sympathetic character and much harder to dislike her.

The title of book five A Christmas Visitor is a bit misleading as there are three visitors to Cape Light this holiday season.  First a man found lying in the orchard field by Sophie’s granddaughter.  He can’t remember anything about himself or where he came from, can they trust him?  Second an angel figurine appears at the church.  Finally there is an unexpected pregnancy, just when their children are almost grown one Cape Light couple will face the trials of a newborn or will they?

A Christmas Star brings us back to Sam and Jessica Morgan devastated just before Christmas when the home they built so lovingly burns down.  They are forced to take their children and spend the season as guests in other’s homes.  On the edge of town at the Christmas tree farm Jack Sawyer is still mourning his wife, when single mom Julie Newton appears on his doorstep in need of help with her daughter in tow.  She offers to help him out at the farm but will he warm up to her at all.

Back to the tree farm we go a year later when Jack’s son David returns home from Iraq an injured war veteran.  He finds his home changed with his mother gone, father remarried, a new step-sister, and his ex-girlfriend whom he still loves though she has moved on working there.  In town Emily and Jessica have become concerned about their mother living alone but when Dr. Ezra Elliot falls ill Lillian steps up to care for him and discover that maybe there is more to this friendship than she has allowed herself to feel.  It seems everyone has A Wish for Christmas.

For years Lucy and Charlie Bates’ marriage has been on the rocks.  They’ve had good times and bad though it always seem the bad outnumber the good. In On Christmas Eve a young lost sick teenage girl crosses Lucy’s path and Lucy takes her in.  This just might be the final straw in Charlie’s eyes.  Betty Bowman has been busy, busy, busy with her real estate agency and being an active partner in Molly Willoughby’s bakery and catering business.  She has no time for love and no desire for it either, well that’s not true she wouldn’t mind love if she could just find the right person.  Is Santa the one?

Beloved town member Reverend Ben has been neglecting his health.  One Sunday morning it catches up with him as he collapses at church, his heart is in trouble and he goes in for bypass surgery.  Reverend Isabel Morgan is sent to care for his church while he is recuperating.  She quickly finds herself enjoying the town and it’s people, becoming more attached than she thought possible.  This was not the type of work she thought she was being called to do when she was called to be a minister.  Ben is at home trying to decide if this was the sign that he is to retire and hand his church over to the popular Rev. Morgan.  Can he do it and if he does will she accept?  Reading Christmas Treasures is the only way to find out.

A Season of Angels ties together Kinkade and Spencer’s two series Cape Light and Inn at Angel Island.  Adele Morgan is old and finding she has regrets in her life chief among these is the distance between her and her family in Cape Light, specifically her son Joe.  Afraid of rejection from him she instead reaches out first to his children, her grandchildren Molly and Sam.  Each have differing reactions that lead them to fighting bitterly.  Adele fears she has waited to long to make things right and gives serious thought to giving up her room at the Inn on Angel Island.  Also at the Inn is graduate student Jonathan Butler come to spend the holidays and try to find out the truth behind the myth of the angels that gave the island it’s name.  While spending his time at the Cape Light historical society he meets local undergraduate Tess Wyler also fascinated with the legend of the angels.  While he is skeptical she is most definitely a believer will this simply put them at odds or will Tess change his mind?

I love the yearly visit to Cape Light and have the brand new 2013 release Songs of Christmas in my stack at home just waiting to be read.  As soon as I finish it you can expect another post.  If you want to get away from the hustle and bustle of it all this Christmas take a trip or several to Cape Light.

What’s your favorite book to read to escape the madness of the holidays?  We’re always looking for suggestions!!

Cape Light

You’re probably familiar with Thomas Kinkade’s art, but did you know that he has also co-written quite a few books?

The Painter of Light has now become the writer of light, with the help of Katherine Spencer that is.  I was first given the Cape Light books by my grandmother who enjoys reading Christian novels.  One the whole I enjoyed the series though there were times when I felt it became too preachy, still I read on.

The opening book of the set is Cape Light itself.  A small town on the coast of Massachusetts, Cape Light is inhabited by people who have real life problems just like anyone else.  The difference between these books and many others is the strength of faith that most of these characters have. The Warwick family seems to be the backbone of the town with Emily the mayor, Jessica assistant bank manager, and Lillian the family matriarch.  The Warwick family fell on hard times while the girls were in school, the family mansion was given to the town and they went from being the richest in town to struggling.  Emily seems to have weathered this well, while Jessica sees it in the eyes of everyone she meets in town.

As in many series, you meet so many characters in the first book it can be very hard to keep track of them.  It is worth continuing to read.  The further you get into the books the easier it is to keep track of everyone and the more you want updates on everyone you’ve met.

There is one central character that appears in every book.  As this is a Christian series it comes as no surprise that the character is the leader of the town church: Reverend Ben Lewis.  He is a rock to lean on to his congregants yet he suffers from his own regrets.  I love that he is a human, with human problems.  I think many times ministers are viewed as different, holy, on a pedestal.  Ben is simply another human being who has devoted his life to God but struggles in his faith at times like so many others.

Home Song continues to focus on the Warwick family, this time with Emily at the center.  We find that she has her own set of regrets, a widow at a very young age she also gave up her daughter for adoption.  She has spent 20 years wondering what has become of her little girl.  After seeing Lillian’s reaction to Jessica’s fiance it comes as no surprise that it was at Lillian’s urging Emily gave away her daughter.  Lillian has a very strong sense of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable.  It’s hard to dislike her completely though.  I wondered for a long time what kind of upbringing she had that made her so stiff, if it was the tragedy she weathered, or merely her age.  She also shows signs of love and caring that help keep you hoping she will change.

Emily is finally able to relax and enjoy life a bit more after the mayoral election is done.  She can begin to focus on her relationship with the publisher of the town newspaper Dan Forbes.  Ok I have to be honest here, this little plot to me dropped how I would rate this book as he seemed to just echo the story of Judge Olivia Lockhart and newspaperman Jack Griffin in the Cedar Cove series by Debbie Macomber, also set in a small coastal town.  Now other than that relationship the two series are different enough for this not to feel like Cape Light was merely a copycat, however that element did throw off my enjoyment somewhat.  Still as there was so much going on such as Reverend Ben struggling with his family including the consequences of his own actions towards his son, Charlie Bates is unhappy (nicest way to put it) that his wife Lucy has gone back to school to get her nursing degree, and Digger a beloved old seaman in the town sinks deeper into dementia.  All of this occurs in The Gathering Place.

The final installment in the original set of Cape Light books is A New Leaf. The story in this book shifts away from the the Warwick family.  Molly Willoughby, Jessica’s sister-in-law, is a single mother of two.  She has been working a number of odd jobs to make ends meet.  She dreams of having her own business catering and baking but can’t seem to get there.  Alone since her divorce she suddenly has the option of two suitors: the new doctor in town also a single parent and shockingly her ex-husband Phil.  Dr. Matthew Harding is recently widowed and not sure he’s ready to move on but Molly intrigues him.  As their daughters become friends he and Molly begin to spend more time together getting to know one another.  Phil shows up in Cape Light claiming he is a changed man.  He wants a second chance to be a good father and a second chance as a husband.  Molly wants to believe him, she wants her daughters to have their father in their lives but in the past he was notoriously unreliable.

Officer Tucker Tulley’s  step-brother Carl has been released from prison and Tucker takes him in, to his wife’s consternation.  Carl takes a job at the church as sexton, maintenance man.  He struggles to find his way in town though facing old demons and a reputation that has lived on in his absence.  Tucker hears comments from many of the townspeople about his brother as well as his wife, while Carl seems less than grateful for the help.

Elsewhere in town Sophia must decide what to do with the apple orchard that has been in her family for years now that her husband has died.  Her children are sure the answer is to sell the orchard but Sophia doesn’t want to leave the only place she’s ever known as home.

This is not the end of the Cape Light books however the rest are Christmas themed books, so I’ll give them their own post.  Keep an eye out for that!

What’s your favorite Christmas book??