Young Lara, along with her refugee parents, finds herself marooned in an isolated little hotel in snowbound Norway before World War II. Left all alone, she meets two eccentric, elderly English men, who teach her to ski, and the wise, grandfatherly carpenter Andreas, who teaches her that Christmas really is a universal event, open to every heart and every faith. Lara's First Christmas is a warm, luminous story about the real meaning of Christmas, from the author of The Beejum Book, charmingly illustrated by the artist Maggie Mailer.