“A Groovy Christmas” is a heartwarming story
of Kathleen and Grant, former teenage sweethearts who are
reunited during Christmas in their hometown of Legend, Tennessee.
Jan surprised me by tackling a very tough subject. The story
takes place during the time when young men were drafted into
the Viet Nam war. Grant’s struggle between free will
and duty to home and country was so convincing, it made me
misty-eyed. Lots of personal growth in this story for both
Grant and Kathleen, whose love for each other saves them
both. For me, who came of age during the 60’s, this
was a pleasant stroll down memory lane. Jan paints such a
realistic picture of the era, I was there. Well done, Jan!"
—Romance author Devon Matthews
"A
Groovy Christmas is a heartwarming Christmas tale like
no other. It's a story of two teenage sweethearts, Kathleen
and Grant meeting again after years apart. It is the perfect
happy ever after, love story, with just the right amount
of holiday cheer."—Reviewer: Marissa
Legend Tennessee is the imaginary small town where everyone
wishes to live at some time. During the holiday season when
nostalgia tugs at my heartstrings, I'm drawn to good, sweet
and romantic fiction stories, and Three Decades of Love suits
my sentimental spirit.
—Read by joysann—From Barbara Vey's Beyond
Her Book Blog on Publisher's Weekly
Legend, Tennessee
Sunday Night
December 22, 1968
“I’m a virgin, Kitty!”
At the sound of her name, the small calico cat curled up
on the sofa opened a lazy eye. She blinked once, yawned
and
shut her eye in disinterest.
Kathleen Fields didn’t mind. The cat she had brought
home from college two years earlier was the only one
home, so the animal had to suffer her complaints.
“
I’m boring. My life is boring!” Kathleen opened
the roll of red and green Santa Claus wrapping paper and stretched
it out on the dining table. In the far end of the living-dining
room, Joe and Hoss Cartright were deep in a sibling argument.
Even without her father at home, Kathleen had—out of
habit—turned on the television set at nine o’clock.
The noise provided by Bonanza’s familiar opening
music was welcome in the silent house.
“
I was twenty-one last week and I haven’t slept with anyone,” she
continued her monologue. “Frank will probably propose
after Christmas and then I’m in for a really
boring life in this really boring town.”
Kathleen snipped a large sheet of paper from the roll.
Oh, she loved Frank Smith and did plan to marry
him. That wasn’t
the problem. The problem was her. She’d never
been anywhere except to England last summer on a
six-week study tour with
her college drama team. Even that had been well chaperoned.
She hadn’t taken advantage of the luscious,
long-haired English boys or the Guinness in the pubs.
She’d kept
her nose in her books, as always, coming home with
the expected “A” but
no real-life adventure.
That was her trouble. She didn’t take risks. She was
a good girl. After high school, she’d gone
to college at the University of Tennessee, where
her parents had met and
wanted her to go. She was on schedule to graduate
this spring with an elementary education degree,
just like her mother’s.
She’d had one boy friend since age sixteen,
and they’d
never done anything but kiss and make out a little.
They were “saving
themselves” for marriage.
That was the way it was supposed to be, wasn’t it?
“
I wish I’d worn flowers in my hair,” Kathleen
said with a sigh.
It was hard to be a good girl when so many
of her contemporaries were burning bras.
Sex, love,
and
rock ’n’ roll
were the watchwords of her generation. But
stuff like that didn’t happen in
Legend, Tennessee. Her hometown was far
removed from
the reality of the modern world.
Folding the edges of the paper around the
box containing her grandmother’s
pink flannel bathrobe, Kathleen bit
her lip more in disgust than in concentration.
In her heart
she
knew she was a fraud.
Times were changing. Kids and clothes and
music were changing. Starting with the
British Invasion
of the
Beatles and Rolling
Stones a few years earlier, life seemed
to have sped up. Nothing was sacred and
nothing
the same.
Yet deep down the Cultural Revolution
scared the heck out of her.
Her life was a terrible paradox of
wishing for freedom and fear of
trying it. Just
because it
was new, didn’t
make it better.
Kathleen Fields, Magna Cum Laude,
had never explored marijuana or
LSD. Heck,
she’d never even tried smoking regular
cigarettes. She was too timid to espouse radical views and
too straight to protest the Viet Nam War, because, frankly,
she didn’t agree with those ideas or understand enough
to know what to believe. Yet the changing world was exciting,
watching it from the sidelines like she did—seeing
the sit-ins on campus and attending
a political rally for presidential
candidate Hubert Humphrey in October.
Kathleen tied a red ribbon around
the box and attached the card.
Then she
placed the box
in a pile of
gifts at the other
end of the table. Her parents had
wrapped their presents before leaving
town,
so all Kathleen
needed to do
was wrap hers.
She’d given Frank his cuff links and sweater before
he left to spend the holiday with his roommate’s family
in New York. Her gift from him,
a polished mahogany jewelry box with a dark green velvet interior,
was wonderful. Yet the
gleam in Frank’s eyes and
the slight smile on his lips
had told her there was more to
come, something he’d
hinted about for over a year.
Kathleen sighed a big sorry-for-herself
sigh and cleaned up the
mess on the table. It
was strange
being home
alone at Christmas.
Frank was gone. She had
promised to housesit for her parents
and also keep
an eye
on Harriett Winchester’s
house next door. Her neighbor
was leading members of
the Legend
senior
class on a two-week tour
of France and Italy. Her
father,
the high school principal,
and her mother had gone
along as chaperones.
Retrieving a bottle of Coke
from the refrigerator,
Kathleen popped
the top
and tossed the
cap in the trash can.
She grabbed a bag of Fritos,
and returning to the living room,
turned
up the volume on the
TV before plopping cross-legged on
the sofa beside the cat. Fritos
were her
downfall.
Whenever she was lonely
or depressed they were an all
too easy comfort
food. . . .
