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Christy Novel Review

Leonora Wood

The story of Christy makes you look within yourself. It brings to mind thoughts every man questions throughout life. What happens when you die? Is there a creator? If there is a God why would he allow such suffering in the world? Although the novel is historical fiction, it has direct ties to the real-life events of Leonora Wood.

Christy Huddleston, 19, left Asheville, North Carolina to teach children at a mission in Del Rio, Tennessee, in 1909. The mission work encompassed a small part of the larger mission in the Appalachians started by Dr. Ferrand to help with schools, churches and orphanages. Christy left her home with a thrilling excitement. She was getting herself into a simple and life fulfilling goal of teaching in a school. After all, couldn’t anyone teach children? It’s not that simple. There’s something that everyone at an adolescent age has to experience. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way.

The process of learning through difficulty develops the mind to endure hardship and provide knowledge. For the 19-year-old Christy, this occurred without haste and would forever change her life, and a community forever. You only realize what you’ve had, until you lose it. For her, it was the easy life back in Asheville. The East Tennessee mountains contain Cutter Gap. It’s a cove inside the mountains that is cut off from the outside world. It’s where the church mission and school reside. There, Christy meets David Grantland the preacher, Ida Grantland his sister, Miss Alice Henderson the Quaker mission worker from Pennsylvania and Dr. Neil Macneill, physician of the cove.

The story isn’t one of easy going, but rather quite gloomy and grim. The area appears as if it’s a civilization of the mid to late 1800s. Moonshine stills create an atmosphere of deadly feuding. Disease plagues the area without fail. The amount of poverty is staggering. Children walk around barefoot, wear over sized coats, and lack basic education and sanitization. There’s no running water, electricity, general store, or technology. It just doesn’t exist. No one in the cove has reading skills except the the mission and doctor. Teaching the children and parents to read are only a small part of the mission’s goal. For Christy to teach 67 schoolchildren would be a feat no one dare try.

Although these people do have hard times, those small moments of good are cherished dearly by many. Music and ballads are something that are part of their culture. Joys such as quilting, making honey and friends are more important. Superstitions are believed by many. They have a Calvinist heritage, and belief in God. However Dr. MacNeill insists that the mission not come in and instantly disrupt the area. It’s not the right approach. The people spend their time away from the bustle of city life. It may seem these people are not facing the same scenarios that the average person goes through. That would be true. But realize that the everyday person is blind to this merciless poverty and uneducated amidst all who walk.

It may seem Christy voluntarily went to help those in need for a good cause. However, Christy discovers she selfishly came to help those in need. Only through life-changing moments can you see yourself for who you truly are. Cutter Gap brings to account a period where a set of people were forgotten. It’s so important that it asks the questions about moral responsibilities. There are so many varied questions and beliefs that these poverty-stricken people have.

There’s a journey of both physical and spiritual adventure. It’s about wading through unrelenting problems. It shows us how we can teach and learn by the experiences we have with one another. Think about every decision carefully. It may be crucial in every turn of your life. Christy is a story about a community amidst the beautiful Great Smoky Mountains and Cherokee National Forest.

Who knew that the beauty of these mountains would carry an immense amount of pressure to a people and go on to set an example for the world? It’s there in the mountains. The story beckons to be told decade after decade.

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Christy:

“Looking back I can see that the young walk unabashedly into many a situation which the more experienced would avoid at all costs. Not that I was cocky or overconfident that first day of school. The truth was that I was trying hard to settle the butterflies in my stomach so that Mr. Grantland would think me an experienced teacher.”

Miss Alice:

“David, dear boy, haven’t you watched the people’s faces while they’re singing? Their foot-tapping hymns are one of the few joys of their lives. Why tamper with that? They’re praising God in their own way. Well– let them!”

Details

Published by McGraw-Hill
October 9, 1967
First Edition
Printed in the United States
Hardcover with dust jacket
8.5″x5.5″x1.5″
496 pages
MSRP $6.95

Summary

CHRISTY by Catherine Marshall

“Christy, I never know what to expect from you” is a comment flung at the beguiling hero ine of this magnificent novel. Nor will the reader know what to expect. That is one reason among many why Christy may be destined to find her own place beside Jane Austen’s Emma, Becky Sharp, the heroine of Rebecca and others whom readers will remember with delight.

Why did a nineteen-year-old girl want to leave her comfortable home to teach in a one room schoolhouse in an isolated cove in the Great Smokies? But Christy Huddleston, “eager to taste life to the full,” wanted to do just that From the moment she steps onto the station platform at El Pano that snowy January morning in 1912, her adventures begin; and they continue right on through the unforgettable last chapter. There are strange mountain customs that shatter Christy’s illusions about life and make her face up to herself and what she be lieves; a love triangle which builds to the very end; humor, suspense and adventure, foot-tap ping music – and yes, even the smells seem real.

After ten enormously successful nonfiction books, this is Catherine Marshall’s first novel – “a story I have always wanted to write.” For this epic novel the author goes back to the roots of her life, since she and her parents were born in Appalachia. With authentic background, meticulously researched, this book was nine years in the making.

The stage is titanic, with the mountains, blue and mauve and brooding, as the backdrop. The characters walk out of the pages as real persons: Alice Henderson, with her Quaker background and her rare wisdom, to whom lack of joy is heresy; Neil MacNeill, arrogant, enigmatic doctor who owes “his people” his love and protec-tion; David Grantland, handsome, brash young preacher who thinks he can reform everyone to his own pattern; Fairlight Spencer, barefoot mountain woman, a princess in homespun with a mind athirst to learn; and some delightful
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children, like little Burl of the red cowlick and freckles, and Creed, clown of the schoolroom.

Here is a slice of life. And although it is spe cifically life in Appalachia in 1912, it is also life representative of all of as, in any time. Cutter Gap could be anywhere – “the Cove. the troubled Cove with its poverty and its smells. with so many problems, as if it embraced within the borders of one small kingdom a sampling of the lacerations of the whole world,” indeed, of the very human problems which every man and woman faces today.

And what is so unusual among contemporary novels is the fallfillment, in Christy, of the promise that “where there is hunger, there is also bread.” Here is a powerfully moving book of great depth with real answers to man’s deepest needs, and a joyful reading experience from the first page to the last.

CATHERINE MARSHALL is the author of three great best-sellers, A Man Called Peter, To Live Again, and Beyond Our Selves. Her books have sold two-and-a-half million copies, and these include several collections of sermons and prayers by her late husband, Peter Marshall. She is now married to Leonard LeSourd, Executive Editor of Guideposts mag. azine. Her son, Peter John Marshall, is now in the Presbyterian ministry in New England. Catherine’s life is centered on writing and family activities. (The LeSourds have three children: Linda, Chester and Jeffrey, and for most of the year they live in southern Florida.) She also finds time to serve as a roving editor for Guide posts, to handle a voluminous correspondence, to paint tropical scenes, and to make a few speaking appearances. She is widely known over the country as an attractive, provocative and inspiring personality.

Map of Cutter Gap

It should be noted this map is included on the audiobook. It also includes a brief description of the characters of the novel. The map however is cropped and doesn’t include some locations. The physical novel displays it in its entirety.

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