Do you believe in Santa Claus? “If it weren’t for my grandfather Max, I might have become a non-believer as well.”

So begins the tale of how Nicolas Claus came to join the family of Max Pepin for a time in this warm, nostalgic story of life on a real-life farm in the 1870s. Readers will grin at this candid peek into Max’s diary, where an undercover Santa Claus is judged as “too fat to be much good for farm work” and the Kringle children sneak into the chicken coop in the middle of the night.

But where, exactly, did this strange Claus family come from? Was it Hungary? Finland? Max and his tender-hearted wife, Rose, begin to have their suspicions. Something just wasn’t adding up… What kind of children didn’t grow taller than three feet? What kind of family never seemed to sleep?

None of that mattered, though, when Max discovered that his son’s life was in danger. The only question was, would Max, Nicolas, and eight fleet-footed reindeer make it to him in time?