Christmas is only 32 days away. Thanksgiving is coming. It’s a perfect time to get in the spirit.
Here’s an easy way to do it. Plunk down $2.99 and instantly download the On Our Way Home ebook.
The critics like it. From Kirkus: “Florio’s yarn is a richly textured portrait of a middle-class clan with sharply etched characters and a touch of magical realism, written in evocative prose that’s wryly funny but has darker undertones of uncertainty, gathering estrangement, and loss.”
The direct feedback I’ve gotten also has been positive, which is a nice break from the usual 50-50 good point/you suck reactions I get on the football side. This week, I got an email that makes the time and effort worth every second and then some.
I try very hard not to put spoilers in these items. One of the themes from On Our Way Home relates to the impact of suicide on surviving family members. A reader who had a member of the immediate family commit suicide more than 25 years ago and who has shunned the person’s memory (including not visiting his grave since the funeral) is now reconsidering after reading On Our Way Home.
“I greatly appreciate you nudging me in the right direction,” the reader wrote. “It’s amazing the impact words can have.”
I never meant to do that. I had an idea for a Christmas story. I carried it around for 10 years or so, thinking about it every holiday season but never doing anything about it. Three years ago, I started typing and kept going and it took me where it took me and the next thing I knew it was done.
The finished product is about redemption and reconciliation, even if I never meant it to be. It’s about finding a way to make a failing family relationship work. It’s about finding a way to repair relationships with estranged family members. It’s about finding a way to forgive yourself for being too stubborn to make the first move while there was still time. And it’s about finding a way to properly move forward after a family member or friend has taken his or her own life.
I know that makes the book sound like a Dr. Doom downer. It’s not. The goal was to tell an interesting story in an entertaining way. And it’s hard to do a Christmas book that has a sad ending. (Bittersweet is probably the best way to put it for this one.)
This weekend, I’ll give away another signed, personalized copy. To enter, send an email to florio@profootballtalk.com with this subject line: “On Our Way Home 11/23/24 giveaway.” Include addressed and preferred inscription.
On Our Way Home also makes for a great Christmas gift — especially since the print edition is cheap ($9.99) and it’s easy to order it. And I’m splitting all proceeds between the Michael Phelps Foundation (in honor of my friend Jay Glazer) and Enfield Public Schools (in honor of my friend Peter King).
You also can get Father of Mine ($3.99/$14.99) and Son of Mine ($4.99/$14.99), which aren’t Christmas stories but the first two books in a small-town mob tale set in the early 1970s.
