She sees women and girls who have married at fourteen.

Much to her horror, the local doctor, Neil MacNeill shows up and performs a trepanation operation on Bob, using the Spencer kitchen table.Ĭhristy is very young and naïve, so she’s shocked by what she sees in Cutter Gap–cabins full of filth, children whose fathers only show up when they feel like it, and a school that’s ill-equipped to accomodate twelve grades. He was hit by a fallen tree on his way to El Pano to meet Christy. The two of them stop off at the Spencer cabin to rest a bit, and are relaxing with the family when Bob Allen is brought in with a head wound. No doubt Catherine Marshall drew inspiration from settings like these. The Jim Bales Cabin on the Roaring Fork Trail in the Great Smokies. She asks Ben Pentland, the postmaster, to take her to the mission, a distance of seven miles, and they have to walk in the snow. Christy gets into El Pano, the nearest town, only to find no one is there to meet her. Her introduction to the community is a baptism of fire. The titular character is Christy Huddleston, a nineteen-year old woman from Asheville, North Carolina, who goes to Cutter Gap, in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee to teach at a mission school. Who else can relate?įor those who aren’t familiar with the story, it takes place in 1912.

One of my favorite books in high school (and today) is Christy by Catherine Marshall, and when the series with Kellie Martin came on TV, I watched every episode.

Christy catherine marshall book