Christy
Catherine Marshall based Christy on the real life of her own mother Leonora Whitaker, who at nineteen left a comfortable Asheville home in 1912 to teach in a mission school in the Smoky Mountains community of Cutter Gap, Tennessee. Christy Huddleston steps off a train into a world of moonshine feuds, typhoid epidemics, illiteracy, and a quietly heroic Quaker missionary named Miss Alice. She also meets two men, the cosmopolitan minister David Grantland and the doubting Scottish doctor Neil MacNeill, whose competing courtships frame the novel's slow coming-of-age. Marshall, widow of Senate chaplain Peter Marshall, wrote with deep sympathy for both her mother's faith and the mountain people she served. The 1967 novel sold over eight million copies and became a defining title of mainstream Christian fiction.
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What you might want to know about Christy
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In 1912, nineteen-year-old Christy Huddleston leaves her wealthy Asheville family to teach at a mission school in the Smoky Mountains, and finds a pastor and a doctor each pulling at her heart.
Yes. Christy is fictional but based on the experiences of Catherine Marshall's mother Leonora Wood, who taught at a mission school in the Smoky Mountains in 1909 and 1910. Marshall drew on her mother's letters and stories.
Yes. CBS produced a Christy series running from 1994 to 1995, starring Kellie Martin. Several Christy made-for-TV movies followed in the early 2000s.
Christy was written by Catherine Marshall, published in 1967 by Gilead Publishing, LLC.
Christy is 496 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Christy takes most readers 7 to 11 hours to finish.
Christy is a standalone novel by Catherine Marshall, not part of a series.
Christy is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
