SANDGATE — "Each year, the woodcutter came to our corner. He'd arrive on the first of December – a songbird out of season in his old Ford truck filled with Christmas trees. He'd set up his stock beneath our window, angling firs and spruces against a wooden staging. He'd unload a netting barrel, an aluminum lawn chair, his handsaw and axe. Then, he'd snake electric lights over his trees to make a kind of arcade over the sidewalk. Overnight, the air on Avenue A [Manhattan] became scented with balsam and spruce – so it seemed, by morning, a forest had sprung up spontaneously on our street."

And then, one year, "December arrived, but the sidewalks remained empty."

So begins the story of "The Woodcutter's Christmas" – a new book by award-winning novelist and Sandgate author Brad Kessler, illu

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