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Title: The Woman Behind the Inn: A Children’s Book Reimagines the Nativity Through the Innkeeper’s Wife

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 10th Sep 2026 - The Innkeeper’s Wife, a children’s book written by Muriel Drake Ryan, PhD, shifts that lens to the person behind the inn’s daily work of hospitality: the innkeeper’s overworked, often-overlooked wife, reimagined here as Hannah.Published by WestBow Press in 2012, the story came to Ryan as a vision, imagining what it must have been like inside the inn “with no room”—and what it might have meant to welcome a family with nowhere else to go.The book follows Aaron, the innkeeper, and his wife, Hannah, in Bethlehem, crowded with travelers returning for the Roman census. Aaron delights in the extra business and company; Hannah bears the extra cooking, cleaning, and serving that comes with it. When Mary and Joseph arrive in the middle of the night, Hannah initially sees them as one more burden her husband has handed her—before the night becomes something else entirely.That transformation from reluctant hospitality to sacred welcome also echoes themes in Ryan’s broader body of work. A retired teacher, principal, and superintendent, Ryan turned to full-time home-missions work at retirement, co-founding the ministry Families by Choice with her husband, Bernard Ryan, in 2006. Her nonfiction book Homeless I Have Known draws on that ministry directly; The Innkeeper’s Wife approaches the theme of welcoming the overlooked from a different direction—through Scripture, illustration, and a woman’s perspective on the Christmas story.The Innkeeper’s Wife is suited to readers of Christian children’s literature, nativity and holiday storytelling, and picture books that pair Scripture with original illustration.Muriel D. Ryan, PhD, co-founded Families by Choice with her husband, Bernard Ryan, and served as its Executive Director. In...

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