The Man Who Got Away

<p>Nicholas Clauzen worked hard worshiped often laughed cried loved and lost. He and his wife built the most beautiful home in the kingdom where they began raising their five children on their farm. Life was good … until fate had other ideas.</p><p>Lord Asster offended by the beauty of Nicholas’s humble home sets in motion a plan to seize the Clauzens’ farm for himself. As Nicholas is away to plead his case Asster has the farmer’s family brutally murdered. Soon after the nobleman himself is killed. Accused of a crime he didn’t commit Nicholas becomes a hunted man.</p><p>Raw with grief and anger he flees into the mountains where he uses his woodsman’s skills to survive in the wilderness. To pass the years he makes wooden toys with an imaginary companion named Sprite. Desperate lonely and yearning for human contact he decides to go back into the village in disguise to sell his wares even if the price may be death. Once there he learns that no one can afford to buy his toys because the royal family has taxed everyone into poverty as retribution for Asster’s murder. Determined to help somehow and to remind the villagers that there is still some good in the world he gives the toys to the children before slipping back into the night an anonymous bearded benefactor from the cold North.</p><p>In doing so a lonely man on the fringes of sanity creates the legend of Santa Claus—proving that even in horror there can always be hope.</p>