Prairie Christmas: Short Stories Celebrating America's Pioneer Past

By Robin Bernheim

Journey to America's frontier past and join five families as they celebrate the simple joys of Christmas. Penned by award winning screenwriter Robin Bernheim ("Quantum Leap", " The Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder"), these charming stories are perfect for young readers and the young at heart. If you're a fan of "Little House on the Prairie", you'll love these heartwarming tales of times past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robin Bernheim
• Release date: Oct 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301496709

Robin Bernheim

A native Californian born in Santa Monica, Robin Bernheim has written and produced over 20 television dramas, including “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “Quantum Leap,” “MacGyver,” “Remington Steele,” “She Spies,” “Star Trek Voyager,” “Diagnosis Murder,” and William Shatner’s “Tekwar.” Over the years, she’s had the pleasure of working with television legends both in front of and behind the camera, including actors Edward Woodward, Dick Van Dyke, Andy Griffith, Jack Warden, Patrick Stewart, Scott Bakula, and Dean Stockwell, as well as executive producers Aaron Spelling and Don Bellisario. In the realm of animation, Robin has penned episodes for “Men In Black,” as well as “Extreme Ghostbusters,” and recently co-produced and wrote the documentary feature “Little House On The Prairie: The Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder,” for PBS. While she has been writing and producing for many years on a wide variety of shows, Robin finds it amusing that the majority of her fans either wear a bonnet or carry a phaser. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from UCLA, Robin lives in Encino, California, with husband David, daughter Katherine and mutt Frisky. In her spare time, Robin enjoys helping her daughter with Geometry, and is quite proud to be one of the few moms in 10th grade who can still do the math.

Book preview

PRAIRIE CHRISTMAS

SHORT STORIES CELEBRATING

AMERICA’S PIONEER PAST

Written by

Robin Bernheim

Prairie Christmas: Short Stories Celebrating America’s Pioneer Past

Copyright © 2010 by Happy Valley Productions, Inc.

Smashwords Edition

WGA Registration Number: 1468686

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form or medium whatsoever without written permission from the author.

To order hard copies of this book, contact:

Happy Valley Productions

Email: [e-mail]

Cover art by Jamie Lee

Photography by Michael Lamont

The Christmas Moon, A Wisconsin Christmas, The Christmas Fairy, Go Tell It On The Mountain, and Santa Well Suited written by Robin Bernheim. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The author assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or for changes that occur before or after publication. Further, the author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third party websites or their content.

Contents

Foreword

The Christmas Moon

A Wisconsin Christmas

The Littlest Christmas Fairy

Go Tell It On The Mountain

Santa Well Suited

About the Author

Dear Reader,

After having the opportunity to play in the wonderful sandbox of series television for over two decades, the opportunity arose last year for me to write and produce a documentary feature on the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I had never read Wilder’s Little House On The Prairie series of children’s novels before and, quite honestly, I had no real desire to do so. Nonetheless, accustomed to the discipline of series television, I grimly sat down and cracked open the first of her novels, expecting to slog through them without a moment of real enjoyment.

What a delightful surprise awaited. Wilder’s books transported me back to a time and place on the American frontier I hadn’t visited since I was a fifth grader. The stories were so simple and so dear, I wished there were more of them to share with my daughter.

While I may not have lived on the pioneer frontier, neither did Michael Landon, yet Landon created stories that captured the imagination of television audiences around the world. Sadly, today a series like Little House On The Prairie would have a very slim chance of making it on the air for a number of reasons, though none of them are good reasons. As a writer, however, I’ve been told that since I don’t require an audience to pursue my craft, there’s nothing standing between me and a good story except for a blank piece of paper. So I sat down and filled that blank page with stories about American children and families as they celebrated Christmas across the pioneer frontier, beginning with Christmas in 1776. And thanks to the relentless badgering of my friends and family, especially my husband David, the blank piece of paper written for no one’s eyes but my own has somehow managed to find its way in front of yours.

Enjoy your journey to the Land Of Christmas Long Ago! I hope you meet some special people there, whom you will remember fondly enough to visit year after year.

Merry Christmas!

Robin Bernheim Burger

Encino, California

November 2010

The Christmas Moon

Sheets of liquid gray poured from the steel sky. It seemed as if the rain would never stop, and worse, by nightfall, the cold would turn the ground to ice. General Washington looked out at the soldiers, camped on the field. Some of the boys were as