Christmas is familiar territory for Wendy LaManque.

The lawyer and author performs Christmas music in a band with her husband, and this year marks their fourth year hosting the Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Roscoe. So when someone once jokingly described her as a “one-woman Hallmark movie,” LaManque began wondering what she could do with the idea.

The answer came to her on a drive home from New York City.

“I just said out loud to my empty car, Santa’s lawyer! That’s my hook,” she said.

That became Santa’s Lawyer, a new holiday romantic comedy novella LaManque wrote under the pen name MJ Perkins.

The story follows Avery Hoarfrost, an ambitious lawyer who’s burned out and considering leaving her career behind. She fills out a job application without paying much attention to the fine print — and wakes up at the North Pole.

There, she discovers that Santa Claus has a legal problem: A private-equity firm wants to buy Christmas.

“I am a lawyer myself,” LaManque said, “and I find there are not a ton of stories out there with the sort of relatable hero lawyer who’s got some whimsy in their hearts.”

She describes Avery as something like what might happen if Legally Blonde‘s Elle Woods grew up and ended up at the North Pole.

But the legal comedy and holiday romance aren’t really what LaManque says the story is about.

As she wrote the novella, she realized it was also a story about grief.

Avery’s mother has died, and the loss has changed her relationship with Christmas — a holiday that once brought her joy but now reminds her of what’s missing.

“I didn’t realize that until I got almost all the way through it,” LaManque said.

That experience also opened up a larger question for her: What happens when the traditions that once defined Christmas begin to change as people grow older, lose parents and grandparents, and create new families?

“I think a lot of us are going to start navigating this really difficult time in our lives when Christmas is changing and everything that it meant to us is really different now,” she said.

Those themes sit underneath a story filled with North Pole bureaucracy, a fictional bar exam and a group of misfits who help Avery find her footing. LaManque says the characters reflect one of her favorite literary ideas: found family.

The novella is also a reflection of LaManque’s own relationship with Christmas. Her band, The Whistles, began as a Christmas band, and she calls the holiday “my artistic home base.”

She wrote and self-published the 27,000-word book in about five months, handling the editing, cover design and formatting herself. She says its compact length makes it approachable for book clubs — and encourages a second reading to catch the story’s hidden clues.

Ultimately, LaManque hopes readers find something beyond the holiday jokes and romance.

“I would like people to certainly feel better than they did when they picked up this book,” she said.

And, she said, she hopes the story leaves readers “a little more open to the possibility of magic and good things happening.”

Santa’s Lawyer is available as an ebook, paperback, and through Kindle Unlimited, and will also be available locally at Hound Books in Roscoe.