46 pages • 1-hour read
Winter Stroll
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use.
Family Resilience in the Face of Crisis
The novel starts with the Quinn family facing multiple crises during the holiday season. Bart is missing in Afghanistan, Patrick is jailed, Kelley and Mitzi’s marriage is fractured by infidelity, and grief weighs heavily on each member. The way the characters cope with these situations shows how resilience arises through love, forgiveness, and connection, even when there is no certainty for how events will play out. The Quinns are often messy and unresolved, but what binds them is recognizing each other’s humanity and showing respect despite each other’s failures.
Their resilience is rooted in Kelley and Margaret’s unconventional yet stabilizing relationship as ex-spouses. The couple’s support offers comfort and continuity as each family member manages personal struggles. Margaret’s support in saving the inn goes beyond money; her steady presence calms everyone, including Mitzi. Kelley and Margaret work together to support Kevin when Isabelle and the baby are away, showing they are a unified, dependable family in times of crisis.
The family unifies around Bart’s absence, which becomes a shared source of concern. Kevin observes that “with Bart missing…it feels like we should all be together” (102), a sentiment that captures how the loss of one member can bring a family together. Kelley supports Jennifer by stepping in to help care for her boys, offering practical assistance and emotional reassurance at a moment when she is overwhelmed by Patrick’s absence. The text notes her positive coping strategy: “She doesn’t need drugs. All she needs is the support of this wonderful family she married into” (156). Additionally, the family accepts Mitzi’s return with little hesitation, welcoming her back to Nantucket, the inn, and the family itself, recognizing that her presence is essential to Kelley’s well-being and to the fragile sense of wholeness they are trying to restore.
The baptism and the family prayer at the novel’s conclusion symbolize the Quinn family’s unity and resilience, highlighting a collective affirmation in which the family celebrates life, continuity, and shared responsibility. Despite past conflicts and ongoing crises, the family remains connected through love, tradition, and mutual care. The novel emphasizes that family cohesion is not the absence of struggle but the willingness to gather, support one another, and reaffirm their bonds even in difficult times.
By the end of the novel, the family makes it through the Christmas Stroll weekend though many of their problems remain unresolved, and their futures are uncertain. With this ending, Hilderbrand presents familial resilience as an ongoing process of endurance rather than a decisive victory over adversity.
The Search for Stability and Identity
While the characters draw comfort and a sense of belonging from their shared identity as members of the Quinn family, external forces repeatedly unsettle their confidence and challenge their assumptions about the core of who they are. Over the course of the holiday weekend, disruptions and change test each character’s sense of self. During these times, Hilderbrand presents the search for self as inseparable from the search for grounding, particularly amid the shifting dynamics of a blended family facing loss and uncertainty. These conflicts demonstrate how quickly emotional certainty can erode, dismantling the structures that once defined the characters’ lives. The compressed timeline intensifies this unraveling, forcing confrontations that might otherwise be avoided. The novel suggests that life offers no guarantees, and the characters are often left with only one option: to take a leap of faith, hoping that meaning will follow.
Mitzi’s struggle with her identity centers on guilt and grief. Having left Kelley and now George, she searches for meaning while confronting the unresolved terror of Bart’s disappearance, a loss that consumes her inner life and narrows her sense of self. The text describes her return to Nantucket: “It’s a bizarre feeling, coming back to a place where she lived for so many years, but no longer lives and no longer belongs” (30). By staying through the weekend, she reintegrates herself into a space from which she feels alienated. Ava faces a different crisis, wrestling with who she is apart from her romantic attachments. Though she longs to reclaim agency, her choices reveal how difficult it is for her to sustain autonomy when her emotional history exerts such a powerful pull. Margaret, outwardly stable and self-described as “unflappable,” wrestles with doubt as she considers committing her life to Drake, revealing that even the most composed identities are vulnerable the changes that come with each life stage.
Jennifer’s search for stability, however, takes a darker turn. With Patrick incarcerated, she is forced to redefine her idea of motherhood and what it means to care for her adult son. Her growing reliance on substances exposes the widening gap between the control she projects and the chaos she feels internally. The pain medication she uses initially provides a sense of invincibility, but gradually it erodes her agency, leaving her desperate and fractured under the pressure she faces. Together, these narratives underscore the novel’s exploration of identity not as a fixed state but as a continual cycle of loss, love, and finding the courage to move forward without having all the answers.
Seasonal Rituals as Anchors During Instability
The return home at Christmas time is a literary trope that can symbolize personal reflection, family reconciliation, or the renewal of hope. It can also be a time of profound stress and confrontation, as long-standing grudges surface amid the pressure of the holidays. In the case of Winter Stroll, both aspects of this trope come into play, as Hilderbrand uses this premise as an opportunity for characters to come home and reconnect in a familiar space while processing their individual and shared trauma.
The holiday weekend and its rituals provide a framework for characters to reconsider past choices and engage with each other in the present, opening the door to reconciliation. For the Quinns, seasonal rituals are stabilizing forces amid the unpredictable currents of the characters’ lives. As Kelley reflects on his annual Christmas letter, he says, “‘Peace on earth, good will toward men,’ […] this is my Christmas mantra this year, I’m going to concede” (8). His attitude underscores how the broader meaning of the season can translate into a personal resolution that applies to his family’s specific situation.
Hilderbrand extends this theme across multiple holiday rituals, showing that the season’s anchoring power manifests in ways that resonate differently with each character. Caroling, for example, connects Ava to the comfort of lifelong traditions. Ava reflects while singing at the nursing home, “No matter how old one gets, one never forgets the words to ‘Jingle Bells’” (16). This observation helps her come back to a stable center as she sorts out her plans for the future. Similarly, the Festival of Trees party is a structured, communal celebration that creates an opportunity for Mitzi and Margaret to bond. Mitzi is usually critical of Margaret—she considers her arrogant and elitist—but when Margaret lends Mitzi a dress and helps her with her makeup so she can accompany Kelley to the festival, Mitzi sees another side of her supposed rival.
The most important ritual is symbolic in its connection to the holiday season. Genevieve’s baptism is a Catholic tradition that reinforces familial bonds and the collective responsibility they have for caring a new life. This echoes the Christian origins of Christmas as the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ and the peace and hope he brings to the world. At the baptism, Ava and Kevin find reassurance and reaffirm their personal and familial identities. In this way, the ritual transcends its ceremonial function and become mechanisms through which characters revitalize their internal lives, finding comfort and perspective in life’s greater meaning.
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