Comfort & Joy by Kristin Hannah was originally published in 2005. When this book was released, Hannah had previously published 13 works. She is an American writer known for her exploration of relationships and emotional complexity. She lives in Washington State, where this novel takes place. Comfort & Joy follows Joy Candellaro, a high school librarian grappling with heartbreak after discovering her husband’s affair with her sister. Seeking an escape, Joy embarks on a journey that leads her to Rain Valley, a mysterious town where she meets a grieving father, Daniel, and his young son, Bobby, who are struggling to move forward after a devastating loss.

This guide uses the Kindle e-book version published by the Ballantine Books imprint from Random House Publishing Group in 2005. 

Content Warning: The novel includes graphic violence and injury and the physical and psychological effects on the people involved.

Plot Summary

Joy Candellaro is a high school librarian in Bakersfield, California. A year ago, she walked in on her husband, Thom, and sister, Stacey, sleeping together and lost the two most important people in her life. In the first chapter, Joy drives home from work to find Stacey waiting in her driveway. Stacey invites Joy to her wedding and tells her that she is pregnant with Thom’s child. In shock, Joy drives straight to the airport, buys a ticket to Hope, Canada, and boards a plane.

Soon after takeoff, the plane crashes. Joy crawls out of the plane, bloody and injured, as it explodes behind her and propels her into the woods. Unconscious, she sees her late mother, who tells her that it is not her time yet. When she comes to, she realizes that no one knows she was on the plane. Rather than going toward the crash to be rescued, she walks off into the woods.

She finds a road and walks, marveling at the beauty of the quiet, dense rainforest. She follows a path to the Comfort Fishing Lodge, for which she saw an advertisement in a magazine at the airport. At the lodge, a young boy named Bobby checks her in. The next morning, she helps herself to breakfast and meets Daniel, Bobby’s father. She learns that Daniel recently arrived after the death of Bobby’s mother, Maggie. He left when Bobby was four, and he wants to sell the lodge and go back to Boston. Joy plays with Bobby, and when he confesses that he still talks to his mom, Joy says that she just saw her mom, too.

Realizing that Bobby wants to celebrate Christmas, Joy helps him set up a Christmas tree while Daniel works. They worry how Daniel will react, but he happily helps them put a star on the top. Daniel confesses that he did not even consider putting up a tree. Joy touches his leg, but he pulls away.

The next night, Bobby and Daniel come home and tell Joy that it is beach night. They spend the night at the beach, Bobby flying a kite and Daniel making a fire. Per Bobby’s request, Joy and Daniel dance together. In the morning, Joy wakes up to Bobby crying outside, begging his mother to appear to him. Daniel shows Bobby a scrapbook of pictures of his childhood and his mother. When Bobby goes back to sleep, Joy tries to lovingly comfort Daniel, but he remarks that he feels “crazy” and goes upstairs.

When Bobby turns the TV on later that day, Joy sees Stacey on the screen, telling an interviewer that she prays for her sister’s return. A storm breaks the landline phone, so Joy walks to town to call her sister. She finds a phone, but Stacey does not pick up, so she leaves a message. Freezing and exhausted, Joy almost does not make it back, but Bobby and Daniel pick her up in their car just in time.

Joy knows she must leave the lodge to return to life in Bakersfield, but she promises Bobby that she will stay until Christmas. The night before Christmas Eve, they play board games and watch Christmas movies together. Bobby accidentally calls Joy “mommy.” She desperately wants this to be her real life. That night, Joy asks Bobby to write a note with ideas for the lodge to give Daniel as a present. When Bobby goes to bed, Joy goes outside to look for a white arrowhead to give Bobby for Christmas; his mother told him she would find one for him before she died. A woman’s voice, which she takes as Maggie’s, points her in the right direction.

On Christmas Eve, they volunteer at a nursing home and attend church, where Joy and Bobby reconnect with their faith. In the town square, she tries to tell Daniel how she feels, but she experiences an intense headache and chest pains and blacks out.

Joy wakes up in a hospital in Bakersfield surrounded by doctors. Stacey explains that she has been in a coma for 10 days following the plane crash. Joy is in disbelief, but her camera roll is empty, except for the photos she took before the flight, and her leg is healing from a broken bone. She was never physically at the lodge with Daniel and Bobby and only connected to Bobby through an unknown, almost magical channel.

Since the flight, Joy realized how much she misses her sister. As Joy adjusts to her new reality, Stacey is the only one who lets her talk about Daniel and Bobby as real. They reconnect through their shared past and deep understanding of one another. As Joy struggles physically and mentally, Stacey is there for her both in the hospital and when she is discharged. She even plans a surprise party with Joy’s friends, coworkers, and students, greeting her when she returns to her home after her time in the hospital.

Joy becomes obsessed with finding her town. She reads articles, websites, and books, pinning maps and pictures to her wall. She spends all day looking for this place so that she can return to Bobby and Daniel, but she does not find it. Stacey brings her articles to help, but one day when Joy tells her she is losing it, Stacey brings her back to school in hopes that it will ground her in her real life. Students flock toward her, and her coworkers miss her, but on the drive home, Joy asks her sister to pull off to the airport. Joy buys a ticket to Washington, but when she sees the plane, she gets flashbacks to the crash and begins to cry. She turns around and limps outside, where she finds Stacey waiting for her.

For the next few days, Joy has vivid nightmares about the plane crash. She begins to lose her memories with Daniel and Bobby. When she finally gets her cast removed, they give her the clothes she was wearing during the crash. At home, she takes down the photos and maps of Washington from her walls, vowing to ground herself in reality. But when she reaches into the pocket of her pants from the crash, she pulls out the white arrowhead she found for Bobby. She drives to Stacey’s house to confirm that it’s real, and she sees Thom for the first time since their divorce. He apologizes, and she appreciates his sincerity. When Joy confirms that she is not imagining things, she tells Stacey she is going to use her plane ticket to Washington. Stacey drives her to the airport.

Joy boards the plane to Washington, driven by her promise to Bobby. When she lands, she rents a car and heads toward the coast. She starts on the road, passing several towns that she does not recognize. Then, she arrives at a town called Rain Valley: It is not exactly the town, but the town square looks similar, and the shop names are only slightly different. A woman tells her the Comfort Fishing Lodge does not exist, but she recognizes Bobby and Daniel’s names. With vague instructions, Joy goes searching for their home.

She answers a call from Stacey, then she sets off on foot down the flooded road toward their home on the lake. After a mile, she reaches the lake. Like the town, the lake and the building look similar but different to what she remembers. The trees are the same, but the structure of the lodge is different. The lake is there, but there are no kayaks or a dock. She finds Bobby in the clearing in the woods, and he does not believe that she is there until she shows him the white arrowhead. He brings her inside to find Daniel, who recognizes her immediately from all of Bobby’s drawings and descriptions. He calls her beautiful, and she notices that they still have a Christmas tree in the corner of the room. Daniel explains that the tree is their sixth since December because Bobby refused to celebrate without her. On the tree, she sees a clay ornament that Bobby made of the three of them. Underneath it, she sees a present with her name on it. She begins to cry, realizing she never got to celebrate Christmas that year. Daniel says that he believes in magic and then kisses her. Joy does not know if she will ever understand what happened to her, but she knows that she will forever believe in magic.