title: White as Snow: A Christmas Story (Mysterious Ways #1)
author:  Donna Westover Gallup 
description: "[The author] describes the setting for this story in great and glorious detail. I could identify well with Charlie's sense of loneliness and the transformation that took place as he accepted faith into his heart." -- Marc Shkolnick "Exec. Director, Colorado State University"
zlib_text: **The Guardian**
  
  
  **by**
  
  
  **Nicholas Sparks**
  
  
  
  
  
  PROLOGUE:
  
  
  Christmas Eve 1998
  
  
  Exactly forty days after she'd last held the hand of her husband, Julie
  Barenson sat looking through her window toward the quiet streets of Swansboro.
  It was cold; the sky had been angry for a week, and the rain made gentle
  tapping sounds against the window. Trees were barren, their cragged limbs
  curling in the frigid air like arthritic fingers.
  
  
  She knew Jim would have wanted her to listen to music tonight; she could hear
  Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" in the background.
  
  
  She'd put up the tree for him as wel , though by the time she'd made that
  decision, the only trees left were dried out and sparse, free for the taking
  outside the supermarket. It didn't matter. Even when she finished decorating
  it, she couldn't summon the energy to care. It had been hard to feel anything
  at al since the tumor in Jim's brain final y took his life.
  
  
  At twenty-five, she was a widow and she hated everything ab