The Christmas Shoes by Donna VanLiere

This is a short book. You can easily finish this book in a day or two. But heads up, it's sad

Summary

-Robert Layton is a rising attorney at his firm Williams, Mather & Hurst. With the long hours he puts in at work, his wife, Kate and two daughters, Lily and Hannah, are virtual strangers to him. He wants only the best for him and his family. Nathan Andrews is a second grader with a father named Jack, who works as a mechanic for City Auto Service, a sister named Rachel and a mother named Maggie, who's slowly dying of ovarian cancer. He only wants more time to spend with his mother. One Christmas Eve, destiny intervenes when Robert, who is doing last minute Christmas shopping, sees Nathan struggling to pay for a pair of shoes for his mother, "so she can look beautiful when she meets Jesus tonight", says the little boy. The boy does not have enough money, so Robert pays for the remainder and the boy runs out of the store, forever changing not only his own life, but Nathan's as well

-There was a movie made based on this book, starring Rob Lowe, but for some reason, in the movie, Maggie is said to have some sort of fatal heart defect. In the book, she has ovarian cancer. I'm not sure why they didn't keep it true to the book in the movie. Maybe, with it being on the Hallmark channel, they wanted it to be PG-13 or safe for all ages, who knows. Or maybe they thought ovarian cancer would be too mature for audiences