Charlie thought that his life was moving just fine and in the right direction too. A single tragedy takes all the positive feelings away from him and he is thrown into an abyss from which there is no escape. With no courage to face the troubles of his life, Charlie thinks of hiding somewhere deep where the world would not be able to find him.
Author Danielle Steel takes her main character to a far off place during Christmas time and here he finds an old house in the middle of the wilderness. The old widow in the house provides Charlie with a room to stay and he is told that the house once belonged to a lady named Sarah Ferguson. When Charlie enters the house, he thinks that he can feel the presence of Sarah.
Then he finds Sarah’s diary and from there on he starts learning about the life of that woman who was the real owner of this ancient building. Sarah used to live with her aristocratic husband initially when she started writing this diary and finally one day she found an escape and came to this part of the land. Here she found love and constructed a new house for herself.
Thus she was able to get rid of her sad past. Joe Girfasi starts narrating the life of Charlie once again after the depiction of Sarah’s life as it was a lesson for Charlie that he too could start a new life after forgetting the past. It is more heart touching than Without a Trace and Fall from Grace as the past plays a really vital role here. The past of one character makes the presence of the other character better after he learns the art of living strongly with courage.