The Thursday Night Club and Other Stories of Christmas
Spirit. Steven Manchester. Fiction
Studio Books. November 2017. 192 pp. ISBN#: 9781945839160.
Izzy
and Ava host a weekly Thursday Night Club
get-together with Jessie Cabral, Ava, Randy and Kevin. They’re College Senior students who work hard
at their studies and play just as hard, goofy friends who love nothing better
than a good prank on each other, harmless fun that lightens their work load.
Some have risen from poverty and are paying their tuition by the skin of their
teeth but they don’t focus much on the hardship part of it all. They are loyal to each other and beyond that
focusing on meeting the directions of their various professors. One professor in particular is a philosophy
teacher who is highly demanding but how isn’t specified. Jessie Cabral is probably the only remarkable
student among them, preferring to be out on the streets doing something kind
for someone in need but never flaunting it in anyone’s face.
“Pay it forward” is a phrase that has been put
into action over the last few years, but what this group agrees to do following
an awful tragedy they are now living with will far exceed that temporary
phase. They will make another bet to see
who can do the greatest good to another human being but they must remain
anonymous.
What
follows is inventive, spontaneous, and a true blessing to each recipient of the
deeds these students initiate.
Two
other stories are added to what was originally published as a novella that add
to the reader’s experience of enjoying a true Christmas Spirit. In A
Christmas Wish, a grandmother teaches Brian and Steph that if they truly
wish and envision that wish their dream will come true. Brian is a miracle that embodies the truth of
the Christmas Spirit, a man who was deemed unable to live any kind of
meaningful life. Steph has a newfound
realization that she is afraid to see become reality. Readers will love the outcome of these two
situations and admire the true Christmas Spirit.
The Tin Foil Manger is about Nancy, an elderly woman in a
nursing home whose children can’t bear to visit her and watch her as
Alzheimer’s disease eats away her mind and body. A caretaker of the home connects both Nancy
and her two daughters to a time when Christmas memories were something that
united the family with meaning and blessings.
These realities of a past life give Nancy and her daughters the meaning
of Christmas that restores living in multiple, fond ways.
The Thursday Night Club… and two other stories is not only a
perfect holiday read but also one for
every day of the year and years to follow.
A great read, may it inspire others to live a life with “purpose.”
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