Don J. Snyder | Fallen Angel

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Prologue

This is always with me now. The way I saw her that first morning as she came up from the shore, across the ice-glazed granite rocks that stood at the opening of the harbor. A long blue denim dress. Dark hair, black as ink, in a thick braid lying across her left shoulder. She was holding the hand of a small child in a green cloth coat. They were both wearing silly red puddle boots, so inappropriate for a winter day in Maine. There was a yellow dog running out ahead of them. Or was it later, at the cottage where I first saw the dog?

This is the difficulty I am up against, trying to recall her precisely as I first saw her in those beginning moments, just the plain and exquisite portrait of her when she was still a stranger to me. Her shape, a few brush strokes outlined against the bruised, winter sky behind her, before I knew the thousand things I would come to learn about her. When I acknowledge my life before I knew her, when I go back and stand alone in the emptiness before she entered my life, I see that I was a blind man. Blind to the mystery that surrounds us. Blind to the holiness of this world, to the way the wind collects our voices then scatters them across the open fields of memory and time. Maybe you were standing beside me that first morning in the ordinary light of the vanishing stars, when she was still distinct and separate from the story she gave to me, and I am giving to you now. A story which began in the last moment of her absence, before I felt the weight of her first touch.

There is a deep loneliness in life that can take our breath away and leave us weary. I saw the loneliness in her and could tell that she had come a long way to that shore in Maine. Didn't I see her weariness right away that morning? The way her shoulders were pitched forward slightly in her blue coat. She would tell me that this was a real Navy pea coat, a relic from the 1960s when such coats were the fashion of the young peoples' army, and not some expensive late twentieth century version from GAP. Before she turned and walked away down the snow covered lane, still holding the child's hand, she leaned against a fence post and bowed her head and I was struck by her weariness, surprised, the way you would be surprised to find the shoes of a department store mannequin worn through on the soles.

But beyond that, what could a blind man have known then? That we are made whole by our fears and desires? That the passage of time is indifferent to our dreams? If you were standing there would you have seen that she and I, in our separate ways, held the broken ends of an old story, and that we had come together in those cold winter days in Maine, drawn out from our dark history, free to finally join the broken ends together?

In 2002, Hallmark Hall Of Fame bought the film rights to Fallen Angel. The movie stars Golden Globe® and Emmy Award® winner Gary Sinise and was filmed in Northern Ontario. Click here to find out more.

REVIEWS

HARTFORD COURANT

"Difficult to put down....The final happy pages pull your heartstrings with a sure hand."

Home is where the heart is. 'Angel' touches Gary Sinise in 'Hallmark'

by the Chicago Tribune

Although "Fallen Angel" marks his first lead role in a Hallmark production, Sinise co-starred in the company's 1989 film "My Name Is Bill W." "This role was very different for me, one of the reasons I did it," the actor says. "Usually, I play a character with some kind of affliction or accent or whatever. The challenge of this was to play it as simply as possible, and to look for internal nuances.

"Here's a guy who finds out things about this woman's past that are going to be very painful for her. How does he deal with that? You have to play that in an economical way, because this is a short film. You have to tell the story while not revealing too much too soon, and that was the fun of doing it. I just thought it was heartwarming while having some good, dramatic twists and turns."

ROBERT GIRARDI / AUTHOR OF MADELEINE'S GHOST

"A compassionate masterpiece. A Christmas story in the tradition of Dickens...written in lucid, precise prose that recalls Richard Yates at his best."

BURTON THROCKMORTON

"Don Snyder is a man who feels deeply, loves passionately, and can write about it all eloquently, and with humor. This is a beautifully written novel about feeling and loving, which holds the reader's interest right up to the end."

THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Don J. Snyder's new novel begins in such a way that it seems the story will be as clichéd as the title. In the end, the clichés are trumped by the genuine emotion the story evokes."

Washington Square Press | 304 pages | ISBN 0743422325 | November 1, 2001

FALLEN ANGEL

A Novel

FILM

Golden Globe® and Emmy Award® winner Gary Sinise plays Terry McQuinn, a high-powered Los Angeles lawyer who learns a powerful lesson about second chances. When his father dies, Terry returns to his Maine home. He is reunited with Katherine Wentworth (Joely Richardson), whose family had employed the services of Terry's father as caretaker and handyman on the Wentworth summer estate for decades. A secret from Terry and Katherine's past turns out to be the key to their future—and a reminder that it's never too late to forgive—and never too late to fall in love.

Starring Gary Sinise, Joely Richardson,

Gordon Pinsent and Jordy Benattar.

Includes "Making of" featurette, behind-the-scenes interview, biographies, credits and production story.

Full-screen version; closed captioned.

Approx. 110 minutes running time.

Originally aired 11/23/03.