On Christmas Eve 1944 in the small town of Bedford Falls, New York, a despondent, suicidal Mary Bailey Hatch is praying for guidance on what to do about an incident that was not her fault but threatens her name and the town standing of her longtime family business, the Bailey Building and Loan, which she took over after her father's passing. What she does not know is that most everyone in town, including her husband George Hatch and their children, are also praying for her. All their prayers are heard by Joseph, God's gatekeeper of prayers. As there are no other angels available on such a busy day, he assigns Clara Oddbody, angel second class (she has yet to receive her wings), to Mary's case, which he reluctantly does as she has never been assigned one on her own in the two hundred years she's been in Heaven for good reason. As she learns about Mary's case, she sees a selfless woman who always wanted to explore the world but never did, while others around her were able to fulfill their own dreams because of her sacrifice. She always decided to do what was better for others instead, especially in dealing with Henry Potter, the town's richest and power-hungriest man. When Clara begins to help her over this crisis, Clara believes she's come up with a way to show her how important her life is when she says that the world would have been better off if she had never been born.—Huggo