Beneath a Little Pine
When I was writing a Mitford novel, the story often ended at Christmastime. This wasn’t precisely intentional—it’s just that the ending moved naturally to a celebration of Beginning.
After the long and sometimes rocky road of writing a book, a Mitford Christmas gave the author a perk for all that hunkering over the keyboard; it was my sweet in the toe of the stocking.
Ironically, the Christmases of my childhood were not the extravagant exertions of the Victorians or even the caroling merriment of the Mitfordians. My grandparents, with whom my little sister and I lived, had been through two world wars and the Great Depression. We had saved bacon grease, raised and canned our own vegetables, butchered our own hogs, and
