Author uses the pain of husband's death to write her memoir

COLDWATER - Dayton native Joanne Huist Smith on Thursday night discussed her Christmas memoir before a moved audience at the Coldwater Public Library.

The author's book, "The 13th Gift: A True Story of a Christmas Miracle" - based upon the unexpected death of her husband almost 16 years ago - was published last year and is currently the #1 holiday bestseller on Amazon.com.

The award-winning former Dayton Daily News journalist began Thursday's talk by describing her early literary aspirations.

"I started journaling in the third grade after reading 'Harriet the Spy,'" she told the audience. "I would spy on my older sisters and try to blackmail them, God rest their souls."

During her early years of writing, she struggled to find inspiration for a first book. She loved adventure and science fiction stories, but an original idea for a work of fiction eluded her. She took classes at a writer's workshop and looked for ideas at her job.

"While working for the Dayton Daily News, I used to clip articles that I thought might make interesting fiction stories," she said.

It took a terrible tragedy to find her story. In October 1999, Smith's husband, Rick, suddenly died a week before a scheduled surgery.

"He had a leaky heart valve," Smith emotionally recalled. "He timed the surgery so that he would be able to recover at home with us since he was always working."

After her husband passed, Smith brought her three children, Ben, Nick and Megan, into the emergency room to say their last goodbyes.

"My daughter, Megan, who was 10 at the time, started running her hands up and down her father's," she said. "I asked her what she was doing and she said she was 'photocopying' them."

Smith's then 12-year-old son Nick's reaction was even more haunting.

"My husband's body had been lying under these bright lights so he was still warm," she told the audience. "Nick thought this meant his dad was still alive. He kept asking us to bring the doctors back."

During the presentation, Smith wondered aloud how she and her family got through that difficult time. Then she described a series of acts of kindness carried out in secret.

"On the morning of December 13, I was getting the kids ready for school," she said. "We went outside and found a poinsettia on the porch."

Smith said she initially was not amused.

"Honestly, I wanted to kick it," she said. "How do you celebrate Christmas after suffering a loss like that?"

However, the new widow soon realized her children needed the normalcy the holiday season could bring. Gathering the poinsettia, she found an attached card containing a variation of the popular Christmas carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

"Instead of 'my true love gave to me,' it said 'your true friends give to you,' " she recalled.

The anonymous gifts didn't stop there.

"There was another the next day," Smith said. "And the next. And the day after that."

Soon the family had a common goal: track down and discover who was leaving the gifts at their doorstep. However, it turned out to be quite a task.

"I was an investigative reporter and I couldn't even figure it out," she laughed.

The family would not discover the identity of the gift givers for 10 years.

Smith revisited her journal entries from the difficult time that culminated in her 2014 book, which was published by Random House. She initially planned to tell her tale in the form of a short story seen through the eyes of fictional characters.

"I didn't know if I had the courage to write this," she confessed. "It was very hard to tell the truth in some places."

Supportive friends from a writing group convinced her to tell the story in a full-length nonfiction book.

"The 13th Gift" has been translated into nearly a dozen languages and is being considered for a feature film adaptation, Smith said.

Beyond her commercial success, the author hopes her work's lasting legacy will be the inspiration to help others in time of need.

"All of us are going to lose someone at some point, and the people who left us those gifts really knew how to help others," she said. "Their mission was to get us through Christmas; they really brought us together."

Smith told the audience she hopes her readers will "jump on the bandwagon" and "think of someone who is hurting and remember them."