The Christmas Visitor: Village of Ballydara, #2.5

By Susan Colleen Browne

A lonely cottage in the Irish countryside...a rare snowstorm the night before Christmas Eve...Escape to the cozy world of Ballydara, a wee, quaint village in the West of Ireland.

 

"There's a light in the fairy cottage!" And so begins this prequel to the new heartwarming Ballydara novel The Fairy Cottage of Ballydara... Recent widow Maeve O'Donoghue hasn't the heart to celebrate Christmas this year, even though the young granddaughters in her care are hoping for a proper holiday. All that changes when a mysterious stranger appears, seeking shelter for the night--Hazel Carey, who is young enough to be Maeve's granddaughter. In this tender, magical tale, will an unexpected blessing, a mystical encounter and a bit of fairy lore help a grieving family heal? And rediscover the true meaning of Christmas?

 

The Christmas Visitor and its prequel, The Secret Well, are the origin stories in Susan's Village of Ballydara Emma trilogy... Discover more books featuring the O'Donoghue family and the Carey sisters, including The Little Irish Gift Shop and Becoming Emma!

 

About the Author

Susan Colleen Browne weaves her love of Ireland and her passion for country living into her Village of Ballydara series, novels and stories of love, friendship and family set in the Irish countryside. She's also the author of an award-winning memoir, Little Farm in the Foothills, and the sequel, Little Farm Homegrown, as well as a fantasy-adventure series for tweens. A community college instructor, Susan runs a mini-farm in the foothills of the Pacific Northwest.

 

When not writing, Susan is putting up fruit, tending vegetable beds, and dreaming up new Irish stories...Find more at Susan's new Substack, and her Little Farm in the Foothills blog!

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Colleen Browne
• Release date: Oct 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9780981607788

Book preview

Also by Susan Colleen Browne

VILLAGE OF BALLYDARA Series

It Only Takes Once

Mother Love

The Hopeful Romantic

The Galway Girls 

The Secret Well

The Christmas Visitor

Becoming Emma

Becoming Emma: Special Edition

MEMOIR

Little Farm in the Foothills: A Boomer Couple’s Search for the Slow Life

Little Farm Homegrown: A Memoir of Food-Growing, Midlife and Self-Reliance on a Small Homestead

Little Farm in the Garden: A Practical Mini-Guide to Raising Selected Fruits and Vegetables Homestead-Style

Middle Grade Fiction

Morgan Carey and The Curse of the Corpse Bride

Morgan Carey and The Mystery of the Christmas Fairies

The Secret Astoria Scavenger Hunt

For Meghann,

my Irish girl

One

GRANNY, THERE’S A LIGHT in the fairy cottage!

Looking up from her sketchbook, Maeve O’Donoghue glanced at her granddaughter’s animated face. I can’t imagine who’d be out in a snowstorm like this, she said mildly.

Ava, you’re seeing things again, her elder sister Nuala scoffed, but she dropped the DVD she was loading into the player and darted to the window. As if anyone would want to step foot in that narky old mushroom house.

"I’m not seeing things, insisted Ava, pressing her face to the glass. And it’s not a mushroom house, it’s a fairy house."

Don’t be an eejit, snapped Nuala. There’s no such thing as fairies—

Are too! That’s why I made a fairy cairn—

And everyone says the place looks like a mushroom, with that ugly squished-in roof. Even Daddy—

Girls. Maeve sighed, and stretched her feet toward the peat fire her son Declan had built before he left for the pub. Maybe it’s a Christmas angel, out in the cottage, she would’ve liked to tell Ava. What harm could there be, to encourage the little girl’s imagination?

But given the child’s tendency to get a bit overcome by her own flights of fancy, Maeve kept the words inside. The way things were going round here, with Francis gone, and  Declan in a fair way to drowning his sorrows at Hurley’s, the less said about Christmas the better. It’s likely only a trick of the snow, reflecting the light from our window, she said instead, hoping to diffuse yet another argument.

Even though it was the night before Christmas Eve, it was just another interminable evening spent alone with her granddaughters, the pair of them bored and inclined to squabble about anything—even what to call the shabby cottage next door where her in-laws had lived.

All through their marriage, Francis had told her, You’re a mystic, that’s what you are, and teased her about living in her own little world. Still, she didn’t know how much longer she could bear living in this one, the half-life she’d been forced into with him gone. Maeve felt like she was caught in some sort of time warp, where nothing ever changes. There’d always be the ache of loss in her breast, as if Francis had died only yesterday, instead of last summer. There’d never be an end to sitting here in the front room, doing sketches that she hadn’t the heart to make into paintings, and trying to keep the girls’ spirits up with their dad away every night. Never an end to trying to be a good granny when she’d hadn’t done much mothering in the first place.

Ava, would you get your nose off the window before you smudge the glass so bad we can’t see out of it. Nuala jostled her little sister as she pulled the lace curtain wider. Actually, Granny, she said, peering outside, "there is a light out there."

See, I was right, Ava crowed, bouncing with excitement.