Set in Frankenmuth, Michigan—the Christmas-iest town in America—Viola Shipman's unabashedly charming winter novel features a jaded workaholic who learns the true value of her family, friends, and hometown when her misguided plan to sell her parents company to a huge soulless conglomerate backfires. The Christmas Bridge will be a hit with fans of Kristy Woodson Harvey, Nancy Thayer and Jenny Colgan.
After losing a promotion to a younger protégé and now fearing for her job at the holidays, a Detroit mergers & acquisitions executive who specializes in corporate takeovers is desperate to reinvigorate her career. She impulsively tells her bosses that she can convince her aging parents to sell their iconic Michigan Christmas store by the start of the New Year to a massive corporation looking to polish its tarnished image.
She returns to her Michigan hometown – the storybook Bavarian town of Frankenmuth – during its magical Christmastime season on the pretense visiting family but intent on pressuring them to sell their business – now the largest, privately held store in the world and one they started in her grandparents’ basement. During her time there, she reconnects not only with a quirky collection of childhood friends (who work at and run such local institutions as the Cheese Haus and the dueling Bavarian chicken restaurants) but also with a former boyfriend who broke her heart at Christmas on the Holz Brücke (Michigan’s largest covered bridge), which forever tarnished her affection for the town and for the holidays.
Slowly, she begins to reconnect with the magic of the store, her parents and the holidays … while also rediscovering the magic of her small town, the boy she once loved, dreams of being an entrepreneur (and hiring, rather than firing, people at the holidays) and the joy of Christmas.