Christy

Christy is a 1967 Christian historical fiction novel by Catherine Marshall which tells the story of a 19-year-old mission volunteer, Christy Huddleston, as she serves as a teacher in a remote Appalachian community. It is one of several notable works by Marshall, a prominent 20th-century Christian writer, which also include A Man Called Peter (1951), her biography of her late husband Peter Marshall, a pastor and chaplain of the US Senate. Christy portrays the challenges and transformations of a young woman’s faith as she encounters the poverty, violence, and suffering that exist for people on the margins of society. The novel is loosely based on the experiences of Catherine Marshall’s mother, Leonora, who undertook a similar assignment to Christy Huddleston’s as a young woman. Christy was later adapted as a popular CBS television series in 1994-95, starring Kellie Martin in the lead role.

This study guide uses the mass-market paperback edition of Christy published by Avon Books in 1968.

Content Warning: The novel makes references to sexual abuse, physical abuse, and addiction.

Plot Summary

In 1912, Christy Huddleston, a 19-year-old woman from Asheville, North Carolina, responds to a call for mission volunteers given at a conference speech. She is assigned to be a teacher at a mission school in Cutter Gap, in a local area called “the Cove” in the Smoky Mountains of east Tennessee. Despite her father’s misgivings, her parents support her decision, and she makes her way to the remote area, having to hike through the snow for seven miles with the postal delivery worker just to reach it.

Life in Cutter Gap proves to be a challenging cross-cultural experience, confronting Christy with unfamiliar practices and customs at every turn. Notably, living in impoverished conditions influences Cutter Gap residents’ experiences with work, religion, family, and community. Their ways of living and values differ from Christy’s own beliefs and upbringing. Due to this disconnect, residents remain guarded at first, questioning the motivations of outsiders, including Christy.

Through teaching the mountain children and consulting with other mission workers who better understand the culture, Christy begins to appreciate, and admire the people. While her main tasks revolve around the little school, she frequently works alongside several others: David Grantland, a pastor; Miss Alice Henderson, a Quaker woman with a calm spirit and a passion for helping others learn the love of God; and Doctor Neil MacNeill, the local physician. In addition to learning from each of these coworkers, Christy must also navigate the journey of her own heart, including a proposal of marriage from David and a rising sense of mutual attraction with Doctor MacNeill.

Christy engages in numerous efforts to help the people of the Cove, from assisting David and Miss Alice in their ministries to writing and speaking on behalf of the mission with outside donors and agencies. She also seeks to broaden the work of the school by offering boarding school sessions and developing options for adult education. She takes a particular interest in the role and status of the mountain women, helping several of them learn to read and write. One of these women, Fair light Spencer, becomes her close friend and teaches her how to appreciate the beauty and rhythm of life in the mountains.

Contact with the outside world transforms life in Cutter Gap, both through innovations like a telephone line and negative interactions with illegal rum-runners looking to tap into the Cove’s moonshine production. Feuding between families is also a constant part of mountain life, and matters reach a flashpoint when Christy and David discover a stash of moonshine under the mission school’s floor, implicating even some of Christy’s students in the illegal scheme. David’s attempts to shut down the moonshine ring go awry, and in the fallout, a local man gets shot in the back. This escalates the tension between the Cove’s families and even puts the mission in danger.

Meanwhile, a typhoid epidemic breaks out, claiming several lives, including Christy’s friend, fair light, and Lundy Taylor, a disaffected young troublemaker at the heart of the conflict. While Fair light’s passing tests Christy’s faith, her experience of finding the love of God amid her grief enables her to help the families of the Cove move toward healing and reconciliation in the aftermath of these tragedies. She has matured into a place of deeper understanding and love for the mountain people. Having been transformed by their influence in her life, she is also able to be an agent of transformation in theirs.