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Christy
By Catherine Marshall
Christy Huddleson is fascinated when she listens to the founder of an Appalachian mission program at a Christian revival meeting. He describes the work his ministry is doing to meet the needs of the Cutter Gap community. The daughter of a well-to-do family in Asheville, NC, Christy cannot help but feel drawn to the idea of volunteering for the mission, to teach the needy Cutter Gap students .
Her parents resist the idea, but she perseveres and shortly is allowed to leave on a trip to the remote area. From day one in the Appalachians, she is confronted with filth and primitive mountain people with bizarre beliefs in folk medicine. Alice Henderson, Christy's mentor at the mission, encourages Christy to see the beauty of the people and their community, and to help the locals develop ways of living that will allow them to be self-sustaining.
Christy and co-worker David Grantland do their best to educate local students and teach their neighbors to end the cycle of family feuding and vengeance that have defined many of their lives for generations. Local agnostic doctor Neill MacNeill grew up in the Appalachians, and seeks to make Christy and some other members of the mission more sympathetic to the culture and traditions of the locals.
Christy has many experiences in the schoolhouse, forms several friendships with local women; David has issues reaching a community that views him as a meddling outsider; locals use their children to help make moonshine, and everyone questions their faith and their purpose in life.
As Christy becomes more acquainted with the other characters, she learns that Dr. MacNeill's late wife was Alice Henderson's daughter (of a rape that occurred when Alice was a teenager), and that the doctor's lack of faith was a reaction to the injustice of his wife's death. Christy's faith is sorely tried by these and other revelations about the community, and at the same time she feels romantically involved with Dr. MacNeill and fellow minister David Grantland.
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