Book Summary: It is 1912, Christy Henderson is 19 years old, idealistic, passionate, and hopelessly naive. When a missionary speaks at her church about a needy rural community called Cutter Gap in the Great Smokies of Tennessee, Christy jumps at the opportunity to be a school teacher to this group of desperately poor, prideful people. She quickly learns not only about the extreme hardships these people face, but also about the darkness of her own heart and soon learns that perhaps God put her there not so that she could help, but so that she would know Him more deeply.
Indulgent Book Talk: Normally, I'm very much an advocate for reading the book before watching the movie, but I first heard about Christy as the television mini-series starring Kellie Martin. On a Bookman's trip several months back I stumbled across this book, not knowing it even existed. I finally got around to reading it. It inadvertently sets itself up well to be a mini-series, since there is not one cohesive plot line, but is rather more episodic in structure. However, if any book needed an epilogue, it is this one! I was unimpressed with the ending, and felt the author had run out of steam and wrapped it up a little too quickly or conveniently for my tastes.
Glorifying Elements: I think one of the main points this book flushes out is how we should operate as missionaries to a needy world. Christy has to learn, usually the hard way, that she must function within the culture she has been placed in, rather than imposing her ideas and ways of doing things on people who have lived the way they have for generations. It is only when she begins to learn humility and patience with people she often doesn't understand does she make it through to their hearts. Also, Christy's personal faith journey is interesting in that she learns she must trust in Jesus and know what she believes for herself, that she doesn't just inherit her parents' faith.
Worldly Elements: The health-and-wealth gospel turns up fairly frequently in this novel. Even more irritating, at least to me, was the promotion of open theism (for a definition of open theism, go here). The author suggests that God is helpless to stop the evil, that it all depends on our obedience, and that He really doesn't have sovereign control over it. To make my point clearer, one of the characters, Miss Alice, tells Christy about a little girl who was raped and murdered by her step-father. Miss Alice says that the reason that happened was because a man was told by the Holy Spirit that this was going to happen, but he did nothing to stop it. This character asserts that evil happens because people decide not to stop it. That is just ludicrous. Some terrible things happen entirely out of people's control because we live in a fallen, sinful world. God, however, is not surprised by evil or frustrated by our disobedience. His will is done, regardless. At one point, frustrated by evil and bad things happening, Christy reads Job. I wish the profound principles about the nature of evil in that book had been discussed more biblically in the novel.
General Recommendation: Overall, this book is an engaging read. If you don't read it for serious theological information and are discerning about some of the teaching in it, then it has its merits as a good curl-up-with-a-cup-of-tea book.
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