Ollie's Gift

During a visit to the Jim Crow-era Deep South, a young girl discovers that the privilege she has always known does not extend to others. Can an unexpected gift from an ill and blind older woman mend the child's shattered view of her once-rose-colored world?

Christmas Eve, December 1958 ...The child gazes out her window and smiles at the perfect light snowfall. The holidays were filled with lively Italian family gatherings overflowing with food, fun, laughter, and love. Every present on her wish list would be waiting under the tree on Christmas morning; they always were, and Marie felt like one of the luckiest kids alive. It never occurred to her that not all children might be as fortunate.

Two days after that storybook holiday, the child's innocent view of the world is turned upside down during a visit to her missionary cousin in Alabama. The heart of Dixie reveals a starkly different reality from her New England white Christmas, thrusting Marie into a world of racism, poverty, and hate she never knew existed. At the precipice of her heartbreak and confusion, the child meets an ill and blind older woman named Miss Ollie. She had the same beautiful face. Like how I thought an angel might look.

Despite their brief time together, the two form a deep, inexplicable bond of love. Yet can love truly restore what hate has broken-and teach a child to see the world through gentler eyes once more?

Well, another one of those stories that kept me up. You're such a good writer. I mean, the way you captured your voice as a child, the way you talked about your perceptions as you were having them ... doing dialect is really hard in writing. You captured it so well. I just couldn't stop turning the pages. I think you have an incredible story.

-Jack Canfield, Author and Motivational Speaker.

Co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series

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