Review: sweet story about older characters
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 15, 2013
If you’re planning on going home for the holidays, “Christmas Waltz” by Connie Keenan will get you from here to Atlanta with an enjoyable read with a Christmas theme.  This short story is about June Sheppard, the music teacher in Larkspur Valley, PA.  June is 50 years old and never married.  She was engaged to be married, but her fiancée died in a war, was listed as missing in action, and never returned to her.At age 50, June has a lot of personal history or backstory to share.  The author does a good job of working all that history into the story.  Instead of writing page after page of thinking, the author writes a scene where June goes into her attic to retrieve her Christmas decorations, and sees her old hope chest.  She is moved to open the chest, and while she is looking at the items she had saved for her wedding day, her niece enters the room, and starts asking her questions.  Her history is shared in a conversation, which brings out the main points of her life without bogging the reader down with details that don’t really need to be shared.“Christmas Waltz” is a very sweet, clean story that would appeal most to an older reader, but would also appeal to readers like June’s niece who know someone affected by a war.  While marketed as a Christian book, it is a story about good people who conduct their lives in a conservative manner, without preaching about it.