Kathy L. Gadberry

The Man Who Got Away: Not Your Typical Christmas Story Kathy L. Gadberry

Nicholas Clauzen worked hard, worshiped often, laughed, cried, loved, and lost. He and his wife built the most beautiful home in the kingdom, where they began raising their five children on their farm. Life was good until fate had other ideas. Lord Asster, offended by the beauty of Nicholas's humble home, sets in motion a plan to seize the Clauzens' farm for himself. As Nicholas is away to plead his case, Asster has the farmer's family brutally murdered. Soon after, the nobleman himself is killed. Accused of a crime he didn't commit, Nicholas becomes a hunted man. Raw with grief and anger, he flees into the mountains, where he uses his woodsman's skills to survive in the wilderness. To pass the years, he makes wooden toys with an imaginary companion named Sprite. Desperate, lonely, and yearning for human contact, he decides to go back into the village in disguise to sell his wares, even if the price may be death. Once there, he learns that no one can afford to buy his toys because the royal family has taxed everyone into poverty as retribution for Asster's murder. Determined to help somehow and to remind the villagers that there is still some good in the world, he gives the toys to the children before slipping back into the night, an anonymous, bearded benefactor from the cold North. In doing so, a lonely man on the fringes of sanity creates the legend of Santa Claus-proving that even in horror, there can always be hope.