After a long moment, as if from someplace far away, he added, “A rose that blossoms around Christmastime.” Ben now thought of Michael. Two Christmas roses. If one died, the other surely would, too. “They must not die,” he muttered, ...
The younger sister of three shepherds secretly follows her brothers who are traveling to Bethlehem to see the Christ Child.
Christmas Roses and Other Poems
The novel was dedicated to his late daughter, whom he compares, in the poem below, with a `spring flower in the grass', reminiscent of the passage above in which the Christmas Rose is both a symbol of life and death.
QUITE BY CHANCE… Eleanor not only remembered the domineering Fulk van Hensum from her childhood, she recalled how much she had disliked him.