When an antique dealer asks Jayne Sinclair, genealogical investigator, to discover the provenance of a first edition of Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, she is faced with a unique challenge.
How does she find the family of the man in the hand-written dedication when all she has his name, a place, Victorian Manchester, and a date, December 19, 1843?
She has just three days to uncover the truth before the auction. Even worse, she faces spending her own Christmas alone, not something she is looking forward to at all.
Jayne is in a race against time to find the family of the man, his relationship to Dickens and the reason why the author wrote the dedication.
Can she discover the truth behind a Christmas past to deliver a Christmas present?