The Christmas Pig: A Fable

Prolific novelist and Texas gubernatorial candidate Friedman sets his winning tearjerker Christmas story in a faraway land, where a "good king" decides he needs an artist to create a nativity scene to reawaken the Christmas spirit among his dejected subjects. His adviser suggests Benjamin for the job, a 10-year-old who exhibits symptoms of autism (he doesn't speak and feels no emotion, but is a gifted painter). Benjamin undertakes the king's commission and works on the painting in a barn, where he befriends Valerie, a talking pig who brings Benjamin out of his autistic shell. He wants to paint his porcine best friend into the scene, but fears he can't because pigs don't appear in the biblical story. The ending is the saddest thing since Old Yeller. (Nov.)