A Christmas Blizzard

A Christmas Blizzard is the unabridged audiobook adaptation of radio personality Garrison Keillor's earthy, down-home Midwest novel about two people living in a 55th-floor ten-room apartment overlooking Chicago. James Sparrow dreads the Christmas season, while Joyce Sparrow eagerly anticipates it but is terribly sick with stomach flu. A phone call from James' hometown sends him into the depths of a grand blizzard to see his dying Uncle Earl for the last time. Stranded by the storm, James must confront the pressure of difficult memories as he survives in a fishing shack on the ice of Lake Winnesissebigosh. Three figures teach him a little bit more about the enigma that is life - a wolf, the Big-Hair Lady, and a Chinese wise man from the Inner Sunset. It is at the darkest hour that he receives Mrs. Sparrow's most beautiful Christmas gift, and his life will never be the same. An endearing story, smoothly read by Keillor himself, that wonderfully embodies the spirit of the Christmas season. Highly recommended. 5 CDs, 5 hours.

James Sparrow is a self-made multi-millionaire. He bought the formula for an energy booster made from Coyote Grass for a song and turned it into a fortune. Every business he touches turns to profit. He adores his lovely wife, Joyce, but there is a conflict between the two: Joyce wants to have a baby, James does not. As the story opens, James, miserable when yet another long and brutal Midwestern winter descends upon Chicago, longs to flee to Hawaii. But this year, Joyce is ill with what appears to be the flu and is unable to travel. An unexpected phone call from his cousin Liz, who lives in James's hometown of Looseleaf, North Dakota, puts the Sparrows' holiday plans --- whatever they might or might not be --- on hold as he learns that his Uncle Earl is dying. He hopes to make a quick visit to his uncle's bedside and then continue on to the warm ocean breezes of Hawaii. But a raging blizzard keeps James and his flight crew grounded in Looseleaf. Stuck in his old hometown, James has memories of bitterly cold winters and Christmases that were anything but merry and bright. Then, too, there is that neurotic obsession and downright fear he must deal with any time he encounters winter weather --- a secret in the back of his mind that nags at him relentlessly. James decides to hole up in Floyd's ice fishing shack out on frozen Lake Winnesissebigosh. Floyd, being deceased, no longer uses the shack, but his widow, James's cousin Faye, has the shack hauled out onto the frozen lake each winter anyway. James soon begins to experience encounters of the mystical kind. His first visitor is a gray wolf who has come not to attack him, but to guide him. It turns out to be Ralph, a boyhood friend who drowned while duck hunting at the age of 25. During the Christmas moon, the wolf has the power of speech, so Ralph and James are able to converse. James then finds himself in the spirit world, hassled by a woman with big, black hair. She gives him a 24-hour pass to make his peace. Next, James visits a coffee shop in San Francisco without ever really leaving Looseleaf. Finally, he encounters a wise old Chinese man who reminds him of the good he has done since he came home. Cousin Liz, a kooky woman who heads the local citizen militia, Possum Comatosis, invites James over to her fishing shack. She cuts a hole out on the frozen lake and jumps in naked. Then they enter her shack, which is basically a dry sauna. James has been to several therapists, but none were able to cure him of his neurotic obsession. So how could he even entertain the idea that Liz might be able to help him? This unique Christmas fable will not seem strange or too unusual to Garrison Keillor's many fans who have come to expect the humorously unexpected from this very talented and prolific writer. --- Reviewed by Carole Turner

The zillions of fans who enjoy Garrison Keillor's trademark warm , folksy humor may be a mite surprised and delighted I might add to discover that he can also be caustic - entertainingly so. Of course, a great deal of the pleasure in this tale is in the reading by Keillor - there's that unforgettable voice, familiar, spellbinding as he relates A CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD. It is, of course, the holiday season, a least favorite time of year for energy drink company mogul James Sparrow and the happiest time for his wife, Joyce, Unfortunately, this year Joyce can't pursue her multitudinous yuletide preparations as she has the flu. James wants to leave it all behind, hop on his jet, and hide out for a while at their vacation home in Hawaii. However, that's not going to happen as he receives a phone call with sad tidings - his Uncle Earl is dying in Looseleaf, North Dakota. So, James has no choice but to rev up the plane and head for his hometown. Once there he's not only almost buried by a sudden snowy blizzard but also by a horde of relatives and old friends. For reasons perhaps not even known to the inscrutable James he passes himself off as a CIA agent and agrees to "hide" in an ice fishing cabin on the local lake. Well, this sort of exposure and dramatic change from the comforts of his ten-room apartment in Chicago can cause all sorts of strange reactions. Strange may be an understatement in the case of James - a confrontation with a wolf, the Big-Hair Lady, and a Chinese wise man. Keillor is the king allowing us not only to enjoy his unparalleled narration but his fertile imagination in A CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD. Oh, and by the way, Uncle Earl is just fine. Enjoy! - Gail Cooke

Garrison Keillor has created an enchanting, if demanding, book that is mostly a love story but also combines totem/dream sequences, whacky pun-type inventions such as the fictional Hawaiian town of Kuhikuhikapapa'u'maumau (think Papa-u-mau-mau in the old song!), and those unique backhanded tickles to the funny bone that Keillor has turned into an art form in his Prairie Home Companion shows (an FBI character under cover as a husband, to keep watch over his wife's hyper patriotic activities, etc, etc). The story demands a bit of background from the reader, in the sense that one who has read Tom Robbins, John Nichols, Mark Twain, or listened to A Prairie Home Companion, would more easily ken the sense of James Sparrow's inner experiences in this book. Keillor's drawing of Joyce Sparrow is right on the mark, and we amusedly tolerate her Christmas excess (she attends two Nutcrackers every year, two Messiahs, and three A Christmas Carols), while at the same time we fully understand James's "dark fog of nostalgia and disappointment." James has done well in life, and wishes to retreat to Kuhikuhikapapa'u'maumau, Hawaii for Christmas, especially since there he can get relief from his obsessive worry about getting his tongue frozen to a pump handle. His wife is sick with a stomach virus, and his cousin Liz calls from Looseleaf, North Dakota to inform him that his uncle is about to die. So off he flies in the hopes of a quick drop-in on his way to Hawaii. The rest is well worth a few hours of welcome holiday reading. Highly recommended.

Christmas novels are always nice to read, however this one of Garrison Keillor's is a bit different from what you might expect. It is not the sweet stories of the PBS show Prairie Home Companion, especially when you read in the first 2 pages that Mr. Sparrow, the main character, hates Christmas - the red-green monster - the world's longest and unhappiest holiday with the sheer horror of `The Little Drummer Boy'. This story contains a lot of Midwestern guilt and woe, but yet its' little continual gems of exaggeration keep the humor alive: " it wasn't like her to fall apart like that, she being a member of the National rifle Association". James Sparrow needs to learn to love Christmas, as his wife Joyce does and also get over his fear of freezing his tongue to pump handles- their siren call where he has to force himself to keep his tongue in his mouth and not on car door handles or bronze busts of Studs Terkel. His past contains among other problems; a mother who was obsessed by worries of the Christmas tree catching fire. James flies home to Looseleaf, North Dakota where he encounters his past in the form of a dead friend who is now a wolf. A big haired airline ticket lady, a cousin who is plotting to overthrow the US government and is married to an undercover FBI agent who has married her to keep an eye on her. Through all the humorous absurdities James is rescued from his fears, the blizzard, potential arrest, learns to love Christmas, but most of all discovers the moral of the story: that small kindnesses can create great good...as good a moral as any for a Christmas book