A Star for Waggoner

Book excerpt: Waggoner is a semi-rural hamlet several miles down river from New Orleans, nestled into one of the meanders of the mighty Mississippi and surrounded by forest wetlands and swamp. Al Bauer is a professor of Astronomy at a local university who directs a Junior Astronomical Society for Waggoner's children. The quest of his life has been to locate the specific phenomenon that caused the Star of Bethlehem, something he is convinced will be either a black hole or a pulsar left behind after a supernova event. The community he loves plans to put on a living Creche for their annual Christmas pageant but right away things start going wrong. Bauer loses his position at the university, The creche gets caught up in a legal quagmire, one of his junior astronomers runs away from home, and another, Peanut, who's already lost his mom, faces losing his pop. Carol Perilloux, alias Christmas Carol, a name not originally given as a compliment enters into a conspiracy with Bauer to help Peanut's family, and the end result is a meshing of the lives and adventures of all the major players in a delightfully inextricable way. It all culminates in a surprise conclusion for all the characters in this very Christmas tale. A Star for Waggoner is a true American Christmas Carol blending nostalgia of Christmases past with modern times. There are Christmas stories of historical fiction based on the factual Christmas Truce of 1914 at the outbreak of World War I, to one about a little old Cajun lady living alone in the swamp. One can hardly read the story and not come away with a renewed love for the Christmas season, and the spirit it brings. It is a story about love, about hope, and about faith, particularly the faith of one little boy that binds all of the events together.