Who would have thought that a bout with the flu would lead to the creation of a new book?

In December of 2011, the flu forced local electrical engineer T. J. Cloonan of Lisle to miss the holiday season.

Feeling a void, he spent the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s Day recuperating by watching many different movie versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Each version left him with the same burning question: “What happened to Ebenezer Scrooge after being transformed by the Christmas Spirits?”

On New Year’s Day of 2012 (200 years after Dickens’ birth), T. J. Cloonan popped open his PC and began an 11-month adventure typing one potential answer to that question.

Working mostly on weekends, the toils of the first-time author ultimately led to the creation of a new Dickens-like novel called “One Last Christmas Carol: The Saga of Scrooge Continues.”

The recently-published book, which is available at Amazon, local book store “The Bookstore” in Glen Ellyn, and the Lisle library, follows the lives of old Scrooge, Tiny Tim Cratchit, and Fred Walker (Scrooge’s nephew) 18 years after Scrooge’s first encounter with the Spirits.

Several crimes and murders force the heroes into a life of poverty, and it requires the Christmas Spirits to once again guide them down the right path. They encounter many new and charming characters as their adventures carry them to the impoverished London countryside and then to the perilous railroad tunnels of the city. The book culminates on Christmas Day with an unexpected discovery about the crimes.

And in typical Dickens’ fashion, the book attempts to remind us all of the true meaning of the holidays at a time when many of us may need that reminder. 

The book arrived just in time if you need to awaken the Christmas spirit inside of you.