The Angel Doll Book

If even a small part of a child still lives within your heart, "The Angel Doll" can't help but captivate. It is a timeless, deeply moving Christmas classic about the greatest gift of all: the lesson of love. Set in a North Carolina manufacturing town in the 1950s, this is the story of two young boys, best friends, both 10 years old. One has a four-year-old sister, desperately ill with polio, whose favorite book is "The Littlest Angel". She longs for one thing--an angel doll for Christmas, something nobody in town has ever seen. The boys set out to get her one, at great cost and even greater reward. (Literature/Classics)

Publishers Weekly

Proof that a Christmas book need not drip with mawkish sentimentality is offered by this affecting novella from the author of such true-crime novels as Bitter Blood. Though published as fiction, the story Bledsoe tells has the ring of truth, plus the asset of his lean prose and carefully nuanced delivery. The tale is set in the early 1950s in a small North Carolina town, where the 10-year-old narrator shares a newspaper route with a friend, Whitey Black. Whitey's father is dead, and his younger sister, Sandy, has survived polio with a wasted leg and precarious health. Inspired by her favorite book, the classic The Littlest Angel, Sandy hopes for an angel doll for Christmas. How Whitey manages to find the doll, and the tragic event that ensues, is the substance of the story. Because Bledsoe doesn't milk the emotions, the poignant ending is neither manipulative nor preachy, but authentically moving. One wishes, however, that the illustrations by Tim Rickard were a tad more sophisticated. (Oct.)