Dale Hanks

The Best Christmas Ever: Rated Pg Dale Hanks

This pleasantly quirky and off-beat memoir invites the reader to accompany Danny Boy, age eleven, as he gets swept up in a conspiracy by a bizarre band of bootleggers to create a lucrative black market for booze. The bootleggers scheme to join with their small town's Churches to rid the community of alcohol by Christmas. The smugglers, a hilarious collection of harmless street hustlers, serve as poster boys to show the ill effects of whiskey, wine, and beer. Working together through a series of wry, engagingly loony episodes, the teetotalers and the bootleggers succeed in ridding the place of Demon Rum. But the tension created by new prohibition laws threatens the town's Yuletide tradition of peace and goodwill. Fortunately, from the dark shadows of conflict, miraculous events bring a surprise ending and a renewed Christmas spirit to the entire community.