Book excerpt: Jackie Longfellow, a middle-aged grandmother skilled in crafts and especially crochet, is working at her church’s Christmas bazaar. She’s visited by an actor participating in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, who discovers an unfinished ornament among her wares. At home, she discovers the object to be beautifully crafted and puzzles that it is incomplete. Her daughter, Vicky, struggling in her marriage, brings her three daughters from Atlanta to Jackie’s house in New Jersey for Christmas to get away and sort out her life. When two of Vicky’s girls pull one of Jackie’s crocheted ornaments apart, they find a similarity between one that Jackie’s mother helped make as a child and the unfinished ornament. Jackie and Vicky search through Jackie’s family letters for mention of crochet and macramé together and find an obscure reference to an unidentified “him.” Vicki discovers an old letter to Jackie containing a marriage proposal, which leads her to inquire about her parents’ break-up. The craft curiosity starts a search for family names back through Jackie’s grandparents, only to uncover a shredded newspaper clipping and a torn-up telegram death notice from World War I, missing the sailor’s name. Where will the connections from the Christmas ornament lead and will it reveal The Ghost of Christmas Past?