A Sandy woman is getting national exposure for a holiday book that shares lessons she learned after a year of tragedy ended with the best Christmas her family ever had.    

The idea for The Santa Letters, by Stacy Gooch-Anderson, began four years ago with Anderson's discovery that members of her family were sexually abused.    

Months of legal fees and therapy left the Andersons with little money by Christmas - a time they hoped would be an opportunity to celebrate and leave the disastrous year behind them.    

Christmas couldn't be about presents that year, Anderson decided. So she got to work on a different kind of holiday.    

During a recent interview, she decorated her own Christmas stationary and began to write letters from Santa, instructing the Andersons to observe the "gifts" of Christmas with family activities.    

She enlisted her eldest son to play Santa and secretly deliver each letter with a box of supplies. The first letter, celebrating "warmth," came with cocoa and s'mores fixings for the family to prepare together, along with blankets for each child.    

"I found a good deal on fleece, and I made the blankets when the kids were in bed," she said.    

In the days leading up to Christmas, new letters and boxes would appear. One, on "service," came with instructions to help a family that was struggling more than the Andersons Advertisement were. Another, on "traditions," came with new ornaments to hang on the tree.    

The family was so excited about Santa's many "visits" that the children did not feel slighted when he brought only socks and other necessities on Christmas morning, Anderson said.    

"It wasn't a 'whole-lot-of' Christmas, yet it was probably most the most memorable Christmas we ever had," Anderson said.    

She described her Christmas project to a friend, who insisted Anderson - then a reporter for The Valley Journals - should write the story into a book.    

"I thought, 'Who wants to understand how a little Mormon family in Sandy gets through problems?' " Anderson said.    

But she began writing a fictional version of her family's story.    

The Santa Letters focuses on a family that is coping with the loss of a husband and father in a traffic crash, not with sexual abuse. And in the book, the letters and boxes come from a mysterious benefactor rather than from the mother.    

But, Anderson said, the letters in the book are almost-verbatim reprints of the letters she wrote for her children four years ago.    

The book was released nationally this fall. For more information, including images of the original Santa letters, visit www.thesantaletters. org.