Alone for Christmas, Michela longs for the past, the future—anything but the present. The present holds pain, loneliness, longing, loathing. The present offers nothing but ghosts and nightmares about regret of past wrongs. To see her son again, Michela must face her ghosts on this Christmas Eve night—even if by doing so she becomes one herself. Like early Ray Bradbury, Rusch has the ability to switch on a universal dark. —the London Times [Rusch's horror stories are] horror in the same way that Robert Bloch's Psycho is—horror of the soul. —Locus