Book cover for Zanna's Gift: A Life in Christmases: A Novel by Orson Scott Card

Zanna's Gift: A Life in Christmases

A Novel

2009 Released
144 Pages
1-2 Hours
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Paperback Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
Forge BooksISBN 9781429990981

From the pen of a masterful storyteller comes a touching and inspirational story of love, loss, and the true meaning of Christmas that will take its place beside Richard Paul Evans' "Christmas Box Trilogy," as a timeless classic that will be passed from generation to generation.

When the Pullman family lost their eldest son Ernie to an unexpected illness just before Christmas, 1938, it was devastating to all of them, but especially to young Suzanna, their four-year-old daughter who shared a special bond with her big brother. A strangely gifted child, Zanna loved to draw, but Ernie was the only one who was able to see the pictures in the curious patterns she made. And he did not live to see her last gift, a Christmas painting she had made just for him.

This is the story of that gift, and how it inspired her and her whole family, generation to generation, to keep alive the spirit of imagination, hope, and love, for Christmases to come.
Zanna grew up to be a famous artist, but in the hearts of her children and grandchildren, her nieces and nephews, that first painting, the Gift, was truly her most important work. Christmas after Christmas, as the long decades pass up to the present day, Scott Richards allows us to share in the warmth of a family bound together by the transcendent miracle of love.

Zanna's life, told in Christmases, will inspire you to keep alive your own family traditions, to share those loving moments with your children and grandchildren for years to come.



At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card is best known for his science fiction novel Ender's Game and its many sequels that expand the Ender Universe into the far future and the near past. Those books are organized into the Ender Saga, which chronicles the life of Ender Wiggin; the Shadow Series, which follows on the novel Ender's Shadow and is set on Earth; and the Formic Wars series, written with co-author Aaron Johnston, which tells of the terrible first contact between humans and the alien "Buggers." Card has been a working writer since the 1970s. Beginning with dozens of plays and musical comedies produced in the 1960s and 70s, Card's first published fiction appeared in 1977--the short story "Gert Fram" in the July issue of The Ensign, and the novelette version of "Ender's Game" in the August issue of Analog. The novel-length version of Ender's Game, published in 1984 and continuously in print since then, became the basis of the 2013 film, starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin.

Card was born in Washington state, and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he runs occasional writers' workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University.

He is the author many science fiction and fantasy novels, including the American frontier fantasy series "The Tales of Alvin Maker" (beginning with Seventh Son), and stand-alone novels like Pastwatch and Hart's Hope. He has collaborated with his daughter Emily Card on a manga series, Laddertop. He has also written contemporary thrillers like Empire and historical novels like the monumental Saints and the religious novels Sarah and Rachel and Leah. Card's work also includes the Mithermages books (Lost Gate, Gate Thief), contemporary magical fantasy for readers both young and old.

Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card. He and Kristine are the parents of five children and several grandchildren.

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