The most popular boy in Beaufort falls for the minister's daughter — and learns to mean every word.
Who drives the story
The narrator, a 17-year-old senior from a wealthy family who wants to be liked more than he wants to be good. Marrying Jamie turns him into a man worth remembering — and at 57 he still wears the ring.
The minister's plain, deeply religious daughter who carries her mother's Bible everywhere and helps everyone, including the orphanage. Her secret — leukemia — gives her one dying wish: a church full of people, her father walking her down the aisle.
Jamie's father, the Beaufort church minister who wrote The Christmas Angel and lost his wife shortly after Jamie's birth. Crabby, guarded, and fiercely protective, he gives away neither his daughter nor his heart.
Landon's congressman father, absent in Washington nine months a year. His late, quiet act of providing Jamie's home medical care does what years of distance could not: it mends the relationship with his son.
Landon's popular best friend, quicker to mock than to help. Jamie's illness reveals the sympathy underneath; he apologizes to her and donates $400 to the orphanage.
Also in the story
Landon's first girlfriend and the twenty-year-old mechanic she dates, whose white T-shirt and pack of Camels announce trouble. Lew's threat at the dance is the moment Jamie first defends Landon.
How they are connected
Marrying Jamie turns him into a man worth remembering — and at 57 he still wears the ring.
Hegbert SullivanJamie Sullivan
Jamie's father, the Beaufort church minister who wrote The Christmas Angel and lost his wife shortly after Jamie's birth.
Landon's congressman father, absent in Washington nine months a year.
His late, quiet act of providing Jamie's home medical care does what years of distance could not: it mends the relationship with his son.
Landon's popular best friend, quicker to mock than to help.
Jamie's illness reveals the sympathy underneath; he apologizes to her and donates $400 to the orphanage.
Angela Clark and LewLandon Carter
Landon's first girlfriend and the twenty-year-old mechanic she dates, whose white T-shirt and pack of Camels announce trouble.
Angela Clark and LewJamie Sullivan
Lew's threat at the dance is the moment Jamie first defends Landon.
Go deeper
Loving on a deadline · Seeing past the surface · Fathers and children · Faith as action
Themes explainedThe full story act by act, the ending explained and a quick quiz.
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