The Book

Where ever did Charles Dickens come up with the names Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley?  From his two best friends. Charitable merchant bankers, they refused to finance A Christmas Carol…which caused them to be turned into elderly curmudgeons in Dickens story. Scrooge eventually becomes a beloved father Christmas…but Marley is forever wrapped in chains. So much the laughingstock in London, his marriage and his happiness are destroyed. Even in the afterlife he hungers for redemption.

Award-winning, but down on her lucky playwright, Andrea Smilow, is commissioned by The Playhouse in Connecticut to save it from bankruptcy with a new work.  When she arrives, she discovers that The Playhouse is inhabited by Jacob Marley’s spirit, and he wants her play to be about him…to set the story straight about how Dickens ruined his life with A Christmas Carol. Andrea comes to believe he needs to be reunited with the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge, who lives in the caretaker house.  It is all Scrooge’s idea.  He has been working with Andrea’s roommate, the most powerful witch in North America, to win a second life for Marley from God…and to get Marley and Andrea to fall in love.