LITTLE ROCK – Mike Huckabee is returning to his roots as a southern Baptist preacher with a new book recounting his favorite Christmas memories, more than a year after his unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

The former Arkansas governor is planning a 60-city tour to promote “A Simple Christmas: Twelve Stories that Celebrate the True Holiday Spirit.” In the book, to be published Tuesday, Huckabee mostly shies away from politics and instead focuses on Christmas memories that he says have taught him valuable lessons about the holiday.

The 208-page book offers details on Huckabee’s childhood in Hope, his years as a minister and his marriage. He writes about his 11-year-old self demanding an electric guitar or nothing for Christmas from his parents. After not seeing anything under the tree, Huckabee was surprised by his parents, who had saved and bought him the $99 guitar.

“I didn’t know until years later, after I had kids of my own, just how much money ninety-nine dollars was to my parents back in 1966,” Huckabee wrote. “It was a lot of money and a lot of money that they didn’t have.”

In the book, Huckabee says his simplest Christmas came months after his wife Janet’s battle with spinal cancer in 1975. Diagnosed a little over a year after their wedding, Janet Huckabee recovered after surgery and months of radiation therapy.

“No one openly talked about death or cancer, but the expressions and subtle comments my family members made that day proved that everyone realized that, but for the grace of God, Janet might not have been with us that Christmas,” Huckabee wrote. “I honestly don’t remember a thing either of us received that year in the way of gifts, but nothing would have overshadowed the gift we truly cherished – her being alive.”

Huckabee, who served as governor for 10 1/2 years, dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination in March 2008 after John McCain won enough delegates to clinch the party’s nomination. Huckabee defeated better financed opponents to win the leadoff caucuses in Iowa and seven other states.

Now the host of a weekly talk show on Fox News Channel and a radio program on the ABC Radio Network, Huckabee is widely believed to be pondering another run for the White House.

In the book, he offers few clues on his future and mostly avoids writing about politics. But the former governor, who defended himself against ethics complaints while in office, does complain about the “fishbowl of politics.”

Huckabee questions whether reporters asking about politicians’ finances and relationships would be willing to face the same scrutiny.

“I know that isn’t going to happen, and it probably shouldn’t, but the self-righteous I-have-a-right-to-demand-information attitude is often very difficult to tolerate knowing that most of the reporters who ask such questions would never answer them if the tables were turned,” he wrote.