Every holiday season, I look forward to a new novel by Richard Paul Evans. NOEL STREET, the third installment in his Noel Collection, is a tender and touching story about the heart and its capacity to lose, love and forgive. I read and enjoyed the first two books, but this one took my breath away and made me cry. It deals with faith, love, guilt, shame, pain, vulnerability, redemption and second chances.

NOEL STREET takes place in 1975. After losing her husband in the Vietnam War, Elle Sheen is raising her six-year-old biracial son, Dylan, without any help from her family. Her relationship with her parents has soured due to racism, and her father --- to whom she was extremely close --- has turned his back on her.

"...a tender and touching story about the heart and its capacity to lose, love and forgive... [NOEL STREET] took my breath away and made me cry."

With nowhere to go, Elle gets in her car and drives five hours to Mistletoe, Utah. She is offered a job at the Noel Street Diner and begins making a life for herself and Dylan. Without her husband or her family’s backing and financial support, starting over is not easy. But she becomes good friends with the owner of the diner, and her life changes when she finds William Smith, a Vietnam POW, underneath a truck outside the diner.

In Mistletoe, everyone looks out for each other, and their kindness speaks volumes. But there’s also a lot of sadness and pain. Elle clearly has been through a lot, and she must overcome many obstacles. William has his own demons from serving in the war and is ashamed of his past. Put these two individuals together, and you have a cocktail of raw emotions that pull at your heartstrings. Dylan will also captivate readers. His innocence in a sometimes cruel world makes you wonder why people act the way they do, but Elle’s strong motherly instinct to protect her cub is so powerful.

I was rooting for Elle and William to just give in to their emotions and let their love take them places they’ve never been before. There is so much goodness in NOEL STREET, and Evans’ style of writing will warm your heart. You will want to grab some tissues, a cup of tea or coffee, a cozy blanket, and settle into this wholesome, endearing, feel-good story.