The Christmas Tide: A Story (2005)

Originally published in 1990 as The Wizard’s Tide

Book Description

As he turns eleven, Teddy Schroeder is confronted with the merciless trials of adulthood.

His father’s extravagant spending habits and failed business ventures leave the family teetering on the brink of financial ruin as the Great Depression looms over the north east coast. When Mr. Schroeder is made redundant in his day job, the realities of an abrupt change in lifestyle begin to bite.

Vaguely aware of his mother’s anger towards her husband, Teddy is increasingly kept awake by their nightly arguments, as the family move between their homes in New Jersey and Long Island. The eleven-year-old is even brought face to face with his father’s worsening drinking habits when the old man stumbles into his room one evening and, on the verge of tears, demands the return of his car keys. Teddy holds onto them tightly beneath the covers and pretends he cannot hear.

When a last-ditch investment founders, and with the last of the reserve gone, Mr. Schroeder pitches himself in front of a train in the New York City Subway. Stricken with grief, Mrs. Schroeder takes the children and flees the site of the tragedy, arriving back at the home of her parents in Pittsburgh. As the family prepare for the first Christmas without their father, they wrestle with eternal questions. Is salvation possible? Can there be healing in the midst of calamity? And what will the future hold for them?

Reviews

“This daring, graceful little book is a powerful profession of faith.”

— Detroit Free Press

“Plainly told, gently nuanced, the story has appeal for those who believe in the healing power of memory.”

— Publisher's Weekly

“[He] has been one of our most celebrated storytellers.”

— USA Today

“The Wizard’s Tide is often grouped with Buechner’s novels, but that is a problematic classification, since the short book is so directly autobiographical […]. [It] is a novel infused by memoir, or is it nonfiction infused by fiction?…The book is, as he labels it, “A Story”, but it is decidedly his own story, a thinly veiled revisiting of Buechner’s own childhood.”

— W. Dale Brown, The Book of Buechner