When his newest book is an utter flop, Charles Dickens' publishers offer an ultimatum: either he writes a Christmas book in a month, or they will call in his debts, and he could lose everything. On one of his long walks, he meets a young woman who might be just the muse he needs. Over the next few weeks, Eleanor Lovejoy propels Dickens on a Scrooge-like journey that tests everything he believes about generosity, friendship, ambition - and Christmas....

"In creating my [the author's] own story of Alfred and Dorothea Gibson, I have taken a novelist's liberties as I explored an imaginative path through their relationship. . . . Inspired by "threads of Dickens's own preoccupations with things strange, romantic, and melodramatic rather than realistic ... at times, characters from his novels make a transmuted appearance as characters in his life. ... Above all, in Dorothea Gibson I have tried to give...