As the snowstorm of the century bears down on New England, reclusive author Mabel Miller is preparing to spend yet another Christmas alone with her cats. While everyone else is making merry, she'll be avoiding the whole painful holiday. No decorations. No tree. No traces of Christmas. That is, until the weather intervenes and sends not one but two cars spinning into the stone wall surrounding her isolated cottage. Now she has a house full of strangers when the last thing she wanted was company for Christmas. Yet Mabel's unexpected guests--a family with two young children expecting Santa to drop gifts down the chimney, and two work colleagues who clearly have a history--are determined to make the best of the situation.

As her attempts to protect her privacy are thwarted by the two little ones who are charmingly oblivious to her boundaries, soon Mabel is making cocoa and cookies for the first time in years, and allowing them into her library, a place that contains so many of her secrets. Mabel has her reasons for keeping her truths so deeply hidden. But this Christmas, if Mabel is brave enough to share, she might finally be able to rewrite the past and find a festive happy-ever-after - for her new friends, but also herself.