Books › Silent Night
Silent Night
First published 1995 · 320 pages
A tense but ultimately heartwarming holiday thriller where a desperate quest through wintry New York City tests the limits of faith and family.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like walking through a snowy, bustling city at night—beautiful but edged with shadows. It blends the urgent, page-turning anxiety of a missing-child thriller with the earnest, sentimental warmth of a classic Christmas miracle story. The narrative moves at a brisk, breathless pace, pulling you through subway tunnels and crowded streets alongside characters driven by pure desperation and fierce love. The prose is straightforward and unadorned, designed to keep the pages turning rather than to linger on descriptions. It is a perfect fit for readers who crave the adrenaline of a suspense novel but want the comforting guarantee of holiday hope, delivering a tense emotional journey that resolves in a deeply satisfying, heartwarming embrace.
- Mood
- wintry
- tense
- anxious
- heartwarming
- Tone
- earnest
- suspenseful
- sentimental
- urgent
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- maternal desperation · holiday miracles · urban danger · family bonds · power of faith
- The writing
- Straightforward and accessible, prioritizing emotional immediacy and rapid pacing over lyrical flourish.
- The arc
- Begins in a state of heavy, looming anxiety that shatters into acute terror before resolving into a comforting, miraculous warmth.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love the adrenaline of a suspenseful mystery but crave the comforting, sentimental resolution of a holiday story.
Content notes
- child in danger
- terminal illness
- kidnapping
- theft
About the book
When her husband was diagnosed with leukemia, Catherine Dornan and their two young sons accompanied him to New York, during the Christmas season, for a life-saving operation. Hoping to divert the boys from worry about their father, and to temper her own near despair, on Christmas Eve Catherine takes the boys to see Rockefeller Center's famous Christmas tree. When they stop to listen to a street musician, Brian, the younger boy, sees a woman take his mother's wallet, which holds a precious memento his grandmother has just given them, a St. Christopher medal that saved her husband's life in World War II, and which she and Brian believe will save his father's life now. Unable to get his mother's attention, Brian impulsively follows the woman who has taken the wallet into the city's subways, thereby beginning a journey that will threaten his life and change that of his mother and of the thief, as well.
Description from Open Library.
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