Plot summary

A fictional account of the creation of what has become a holiday classic. It's 1843, and Charles Dickens, who only less than a few years ago had enjoyed critical and public acclaim with Oliver Twist, is facing financial and legal troubles having had three subsequent failures in a row, with a seeming case of writer's block to boot. Gathering inspiration from things happening around him, he thinks he has the germ of an idea in seeing who looks to be a wealthy man with the attitude of a grouch, who has no reason for being such so close to Christmas. The problem is that Charles' publishers aren't too keen on a Christmas themed book, Christmas a minor holiday at best, and that to capitalize on Christmas, the book would have to be completed, including printed and distributed, within six weeks. As he continues to gather inspiration from events happening around him, Charles is guided in the physical world, much to the quiet consternation of his faithful wife Kate, by Tara, his Irish housemaid who he learned is quite well-read, and in the metaphysical world by the spirit of the story's central character, a wealthy but mean man named Scrooge, whose entrance into his psyche is complete with a Greek chorus of sorts. His writing is hindered by his parents' arrival: his father, John Dickens, with whom he has long had issue in his mismanagement of the family finances while Charles was growing up, a behavior that hasn't visibly changed. But the biggest issue in getting a completed manuscript to his satisfaction is that Scrooge seems to have a mind of his own against what Charles wants, which makes him question his ability as a writer and which only intensifies his temperamental nature.—Huggo