Flight into Fantasy

Title: Christy
Author: Catherine Marshall
Genre: Historical fiction, religious fiction
Source: Bookshare
Reason for Reading: I’d actually read this book when I was young, and found myself thinking about it because of My Friend Amy and the Christy Awards challenge. It occurred to me that this book qualifies as Christian fiction I’d very much enjoyed reading when I first read it, and so I thought I’d give it another go.
Synopsis: Christy Huddleston, a young woman living in Asheville, North Carolina, is inspired by a talk given at a revival meeting to volunteer for mission work. This brings her to teach school at Cutter Gap, Tennessee, an isolated Appalachian village. There, she must deal not only with the people’s impoverishment, but with greater dangers as well, from blockade runners to feuds to typhoid.

My Thoughts: I think what most bothers me about my idea of Christian fiction is that in Christian fiction, the characters have all the answers. Or if they don’t have all the answers, all they need to do is zap a prayer up to the Almighty and answers will come at convenient moments. I know that’s not a fair assumption on my part, but that’s what sticks in my mind from the bad Christian fiction I have read.

That being said, I was pleasantly surprised by how lacking in the answers this book actually is. Christy struggles with faith a lot, mostly in defining what her faith is for herself, but also in questioning what God means for her to do, and, though she gets answers that work for her, I never felt that Ms. Marshall was preaching or prosselitizing. This book’s faith, like the moral center of the Cutter Gap mission, Alice Henderson, is quiet and reflective and not at all pushy. Not to say that it isn’t there or it isn’t important, but the spiritual bits are woven seamlessly into the text. I was reminded of the way one of my other favorite authors, Madeleine L’Engle, handles spirituality. It’s there, and it’s important, but you can enjoy her books without believing necessarily in her God.

That all aside, I loved this book. Christy was a very relatable character, and I found it easy to root for her as she comes of age in the mountains. She’s very much a product of her upbringing, but she proves to be made of very stern stuff. The other characters, from the young preacher, David Grantland, who isn’t sure how he can best preach to the mountain people, to the gentle Miss Alice, to the children Christy teaches, to the other mountain folk, are drawn with equal care and depth. I was pleasantly surprised by how many of them I remembered from my first reading of this book, and how many of the details about them had stuck with me.

Ms. Marshall brings the Apalachians to life beautifully with this book, and I wanted to go traipsing through them with Christy and Fairlight spencer. I also appreciated that she genuinely loved the people and their way of life. They aren’t noble savages, and have as many good and bad qualities as anyone else.

Final Thoughts: This is just a lovely, quiet, introspective book, a comfort read if ever there was one. Highly recommended.

Final Grade: A

Other Opinions

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