During the Christmas season, mall pet store manager Vernon Ricketts splits his time between selling irresistible puppies and kittens festooned with holiday bows and shielding the mall's loiterers from its over-zealous manager, “Terminator” Vanderlip. Just days before Christmas, Vernon notices a small, bedraggled girl in a worn overcoat desperately trying to blend into the mall's background. Sensing she's a runaway in trouble, Vernon feels obliged to help. His kindness and their chance encounter will produce a Christmas miracle that becomes a legend as it changes lives.

Allan Gurganus’s “A Fool for Christmas” first charmed audiences when he read it on NPR’s “All Things Considered” in 2004. It appears here in print for the first time.

The publication of “A Fool for Christmas” is a partnership between Duke University Libraries (which acquired Gurganus's archives in 2018), Horse & Buggy Press, and Duke University Press.

"A loving object that tells two stories. One is about a teenage girl with a twang who gives birth in a pet shop. The other is about the risks and innovations that small presses make to survive in a struggling industry. . . . Call it a holiday miracle . . . the book, now on its second printing, makes a case that, given the right set of ingredients, there is still a market for publishing experiments. It’s also an enticing way for universities to make their special-collections ephemera more accessible to the public."  - Independent Weekly