A Family Christmas

A Script by Jerry A. Robbins

A newly-joined family comes together at Christmas

After her mother’s death, a reclusive young woman finds her lost father and must now have the courage and conviction to share her world with a man she has been raised to hate.

Amalia Harris has always felt there were missing pieces to her life.

Abandoned by her father at birth and raised by her mother, Amelia is adrift in the world. Her only anchors are her husband David and her son Oliver.  David, a minister’s son, is both a lawyer and a social worker and devotes his life to solving other people’s problems. He understands Amelia,  but her deep focus on what seems missing in her life is causing problems with what she already has — she is shutting out the very ones closest to her.

Shortly before her mother’s death, Amelia sends in a DNA sample to an ancestry website and weeks later is contacted by Tyler, her half-brother, who sets up a meeting with her father Charlie.

It is an emotional reunion. During the next few days, she struggles to understand his underlying pain from three short marriages. Charlie,  meanwhile, has his own idea of what Amelia’s life should be like.  He wrongly accuses David of having an affair with a female client, but then finds himself attracted to the very same woman. While they clean out her mother’s house, Amelia learns that it was her mother who took her and left Charlie and that they were never divorced. She gains the courage to say to her father, “It was not your fault.”

Then one day Amelia’s son Oliver doesn’t come home from school.

Amelia is with Charlie when she gets the news. He’s determined to support her, but when she goes out to her mother’s barn, she is taken hostage by Jeff Perry, the husband of David’s female client. He has beaten up his wife and may have taken the kids. She talks him into giving himself up to the police. The kids are found safe with one of their friends, and Amelia and the family can finally plan for Christmas.

Charlie’s other children arrive, and on Christmas Day, the newly-joined family comes together in celebration.

Copyright 2019, Jerry A. Robbins