The Santa Train & Other Stories of the Season

All John Hepsebah Lawless wants is a pledge of big money from the wife of a lumber baron so he can build a free hospital in the Smoky Mountains for tuberculosis victims, but what she and her husband want is for Lawless to be Saint Nick and take Christmas to the poor and unemployed. Saint Nick’s sleigh in the deep Depression year of 1936? The first Santa Train, set to depart on Christmas Eve day on The Little River Railroad.

When you’re a circuit-riding preacher who breaks bread with the people in the mountain hollows and valleys, someone who knows their needs, Lawless can’t say no.