Goodreads asked Carlene Havel:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Carlene Havel As I read through the familiar verses from the second chapter of Luke, the shepherds abiding in the fields captured my imagination. How amazed they were to receive Christ’s birth announcement from an angelic choir. What joy and hope they must have felt as they ran to the stable in Bethlehem. How did others react to their story afterwards? Was it possible people thought the shepherds drank too much wine? Or simply fabricated a fantastic story? And what if one of the shepherds had a child, a baby boy, who happened to be in Bethlehem when the soldiers came looking for the Christ child? A character took shape, a disappointed idealist, a man whose life and dreams were shattered early in his life. But suppose, after years of bitterness, this man was given another chance to believe? Maybe in his old age he and his wife were unexpectedly given another child to raise. What if…

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