A Novel Noel

Harper Stevens is arguably the most-valued book editor at New York City-based Stillman Publishing, but in feeling burned-out and unfocused for various reasons, she has been granted a 1-month leave-of-absence to see if she can find that spark that she feels is now missing in her work. Believing it to be karma, she learns at the last minute that she's been chosen, years after she applied, to be temporary clerk for the month of December at The Book Cabinet bookstore in St. Ives, Maine. This is the dream of many a bookworm like herself, especially in her case as she and her childhood best friend Kimberley had seriously contemplated opening their own bookstore, which comes complete with an apartment above the bookstore. She doesn't intend to tell anyone in St. Ives what she does for a living. The position doesn't quite start the way she wants; she has major differences of opinion with Sawyer Lambert, the owner/manager, who moved back to St. Ives unexpectedly to turn around the failing fortunes of this, the family business. He accomplishes this by largely turning away from the books, which he nonetheless loves, to open a high-end wine bar in the store. The ice between the two slowly melts as they learn to know each other better.. What happens between them is affected by their own self-actualization goals: Harper's to find that spark again, which must involve coming to terms with the major reason she has felt lost this past year; and Sawyer who, with his absent parents, must decide what to do about a lucrative offer to buy the store, a sale which could open up his time and financial ability possibly to return to a pursuit he had long put on the back-burner as unattainable in another side of books.