The characters from Kathi Macias’ Twelve Days of Christmas: Volume 8, Yankee Doodle Christmas, return in the new series Remembering for Ruth. God gets the glory, but will Matthew get the girl?

Margot Goodharte and her mother-in-law, Ruth, plan to spend a rainy January morning baking snickerdoodles. A household accident leaves Margot unconscious on the pantry floor, while Ruth, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, mentally returns to her girlhood during World War II. Neighbor Sue comes to the rescue when she drops in for a visit and notices something amiss.

Confusion breaks out when Ruth tells a police officer responding to Sue’s call for an ambulance that her sister has been shot. Meanwhile, Margot’s husband, Paul, assumes that Ruth is the accident victim Sue calls him to report, so he calls his brother, Matthew, who is the black sheep of the family. Paul thinks perhaps his mother requires more care than his wife can provide for her. Brother Matthew doesn’t want his mother living in an institution—but he does want to learn more about neighbor Sue. Meanwhile, Mrs. Delsey wants to help, but frets over the pastor’s family’s good name. Or is it the historic parsonage she feels a need to defend?

Sheila Seiler Lagrand, Ph.D. is a lifelong Californian currently living in the rural foothills of Orange County with her husband, Rich, and two dogs. An anthropologist by training, she is fascinated by people’s relationships to one another and to God. Her latest releases include Kathi Macias’ Twelve Days of Christmas, Volume 8: Yankee Doodle Christmas and the collaborative novelette, The San Francisco Wedding Planner, Volume 1: The Initial Consultation. Her work has appeared recently in two volumes of Chicken Soup for the Soul and in Wounded Women of the Bible. You can find her blog, Godspotting with Sheila, at http://sheilalagrand.com.