The Christmas Ship is a delightful story about a young woman’s search for family. It is the sequel to Fudge Day , in which twelve-year-old Audrey Michaelsen was confronted with those convenient but false stories of family tradition told forever at the Thanksgiving table. In The Christmas Ship , Audrey, now a university art student, reveals the hard truths about those stories.
As Audrey recounts for us her mother Mitzi’s life-long struggle to finish that one great American novel, she weaves an ambitious tapestry of literary and artistic references. The Christmas Ship breaks new ground in probing for an understanding of the mystery of how writers and artists find the inspiration to create their works. And as family secrets unravel, Audrey comes to reject the traditional definition that claims family as mere biology in favor of creating for herself a different kind of family.
“A woman is her mother. That’s the main thing.” These two lines from the poem “Housewife” by Anne Sexton certainly describe the mother-daughter relationship in Fudge Day .