The Magi At Christmas

Details:
Paperback: 155 pages
Publisher: Erica House
(November, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN: 0965930874

PUBLISHER COMMENTS

Emotionally exhausted from a divorce and years of hard work, middle-aged Californian Erik Leiden arrives in his beloved Bavaria, southern Germany, to spend a relaxing Christmas.  A blinding snow storm surprises him on his way from the airport to the hotel, just when he seeks to help a distressed and penniless young woman.  Expecting her first child, Jenny Heilman is single and, at 24, a generation apart. The two end up finding refuge in the Drei Könige inn where, at Christmas Eve, events take a dramatic turn, radically changing the course of three lives.

Masterfully written, The Magi at Christmas is a classic love story, about turning desperation into hope, stumbling blocks into stepping stones, inexperience into maturity, and darkness into light.

REVIEWS

When a purple-haired, pregnant woman with body piercings takes the airline seat beside him, Erik Leiden is both intrigued and repulsed by this creature that seems so different than himself; nothing could be further from the truth.  Both have come to Bavaria during the Christmas season on their own individual quests for salvation in this poignantly written winter’s tale.

Weathering a fierce snow storm en route to a German inn, they discover inner strength that enables them to eventually overcome the pain of their shattered lives.  Jenny Heilman never remembers having ever celebrated a joyous Christmas, whereas he clings to the memory of the enchantment the familiar Drei Konige (The Three Kings) Inn brings.  As a divorced man with a daughter about her age, Erik empathizes with Jenny’s plight as she clings to the address of the military base where she hopes to find the father of her baby.  Similarly, having left his immediate family behind, Erik seems certain that he nevertheless will find the joy that filled him on prior visits to this remarkable place.

Kroeker, who has served as poet-in-residence for the Southland Council of Teachers of English and the Conference of the Living Tree in Ojai, California, weaves a magical story that demonstrates our redemption may come at the most unexpected times through the most unlikely of circumstances.  His background and experiences bring realism and wonder during the climactic birth scene, in which Erik becomes both surrogate doctor and father to the child miraculously brought into the world.

As his German name “Leiden” (to suffer) implies, Erik seems to have led a rather unremarkable, conventional life, more attentive to maintaining the status quo than finding inner happiness after his divorce.  As a result of the unexpected intimacy they share arising from their chance encounter, Erik and Jenny reveal their heartfelt honesty and tenderness toward each other, with “Heilman” (suggesting salvation) bringing the fulfillment they so desperately seek.

                                                                                                            (from Sunspots, the official publication of
                                                                                                            The Southland Council of Teachers of                                                                                                             English.)

READER REVIEWS

I had the privilege of working with GW Kroeker for a few years and knew him in that time as an accomplished poet and writer of short stories.  When he handed me his manuscript for Magi at Christmas I planned to read the first few pages (to get a sense of the work) before getting back to my busy day.  I didn’t put it down, however, until I finished.

While a literary work charged with meaning, it is also a gentle story of two wounded individuals who find redemption in each other.  I’ll leave the specifics to the other reviers on this page who have eloquently related the story, simply saying that I feel better off for having experienced this very human story.

                                                                                                            Christian M. Gulliksen,
                                                                                                            Customer Reviews,
                                                                                                            Amazon.com

The Magi at Christmas is a delight.  On one level it is a poignant love story and on another level, a profound chronicle of a journey from loneliness and desperation, to hope and rebirth.  I found myself deeply involved with the ever-changing dynamics of the protagonists’ relationship because the characters are believable and human.  I must say also that I was drawn into the novel on a very personal level, since the main character, Jenny, is pregnant for most of the story.  Having been pregnant at the time I read Magi, I found that Kroeker’s discussion of pregnancy and the birth process lend a marvelous authenticity to the novel as a whole.  Throughout the novel Kroeker invites the reader to experience the people and places of Germany with the authority of one who is well-versed in the German language and culture.  As in all great stories, Magi transports the reader from the here and now to a timeless place where there are invaluable lessons to be learned.  I recommend this book without reservation and look forward to Kroeker’s next project.

                                                                                                            janicej@aol.com
                                                                                                           Customer reviews 
                                                                                                           Amazon.com                                                                                                                

Now Available
The Badenweiler Waltz

 The Badenweiler Waltz grew out of a very long short story, over 12,000 words, “Crane, Chekhov and Elizabeth Pugh,” published in Bellowing Ark in 1995, which Editor Robert Ward described as “one of the most beautiful and haunting stories I have ever read.”  The novel, however, is not simply an elongation of the short story, for many changes have been made, particularly structural and motivational, as the central character confronts the reality of her own possible death.  The novel’s setting and circumstances also enable the author to present to American readers a Germany unfamiliar to most and from a perspective more balanced than that normally found in contemporary American fiction.

Elizabeth Kurz, fortyish, timid and frightened of life, is an American teacher and failed writer who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  In a romantic gesture she travels to a small spa town in Germany’s southern Black Forest where both Stephen Crane and Anton Chekhov had died, believing that even though her talent had not enabled her to live as a writer, she could at least die in a place where true writers had.  Almost upon arrival, though, she feels so out of place and alien that she thinks of returning home in dejection, but before she can, she begins to meet a series of characters who will open her mind to new ways of seeing her illness, new ways of seeing life and death: a kindly inn keeper; a caring doctor; an older woman facing her own death; and the dashing but dangerous conductor of the spa orchestra.  Near the end, though, the unearthing of a mother’s betrayal some twenty years before sends her reeling and nearly obliterates her new-found vision.  Through these experiences and her re-reading of an old collection of her own early short stories, five of which are actually woven through the novel, Elizabeth discovers that she has actually betrayed herself, and that there are certainly worse things in life than dying.

The major story line of the novel is rather straightforward.  What makes The Badenweiler Waltz special, though, is its structure and narrative technique, something that does not make itself readily evident in a simple synopsis of the novel. The five short stories woven through the basic plot line are from Elizabeth’s MFA creative thesis published almost twenty years before.  As she reads each story once again, the reader sees her character unfold in various ways.  First, the stories themselves, in their thematic motifs and character dynamics and motivations suggest much about their author.  Second, Elizabeth’s reflections upon reading them explore her character by comparing “then” and “now” thoughts, feeling and emotions.  Third, the stories and her reflection upon them trigger flashbacks that give deeper insight into her own character development and motivation.  Fourth, the stories foreground many things in the main story line, parallel situations and events, motifs and motivations, dialogues and directions that play back and forth between the stories and the main plot.  Finally, at the end of the novel another surprise of sorts awaits the reader, a surprise that explains much and ties everything together.