1967
Like most writers, Catherine Marshall wanted to write a novel sometime in her life. Her first two books, Mr. Jones, Meet the Master (1950) and A Man Called Peter (1951), both nonfiction, had given her a name in the publishing world. In To Live Again 155 ן} (1957), she told of her struggle with grief and how "out of the heart's need," it is possible to creep humbly back "to acknowledge that need and to rejoin the human race." Once again she was acclaimed for her nonfiction writing. But she had a dream to write fiction.
And she knew what the novel would be about. Her mother had told her enough about her early days teaching school in the Smoky Mountains. The stories she told were so graphic and heartwarming, Catherine wanted to preserve them. So the aspiring novelist made two trips with her mother back into the Smokies, so Catherine could see, feel, smell, and hear what it was like.
In 1959 she remarried (her first husband, noted pastor Peter Marshall, the subject of A Man Called Peter, had died in 1949).
Her new husband was Leonard LeSourd, editor of Guideposts magazine. A methodical man, he kept a notebook for prayer requests and answers. After his marriage to Catherine, one of the first prayer requests in his little notebook was, "That household help be found so that Catherine can continue the writing of her novel Christy.”
The help was soon found, but it took eight more years of research, writing, and rewriting before Catherine could complete Christy. It was published in 1967, and the public loved it. A quarter million hardbacks and four million paperbacks were sold. The Dallas Times Herald called it "an epic novel." The St. Louis PostDispatch said it was "a novel of celebration... wholesome, enjoyable, inspiring." The Richmond Times-Dispatch said it was "a good deal more than an inspiring story—it is a first-rate novel written
in a style that is both skillful and gripping, a novel to be read more than once with undiminished enjoyment."
Catherine dedicated the novel to her mother, Leonora, whose story it was. (Catherine said it was 65 percent true.) On one visit back to the mountains, Leonora had told her daughter, "I'm not the one to put it on paper. You know, sometimes the dreams of the parents must be fulfilled in the children." And as Catherine said later, "Suddenly I understood how the story should be written—through mother's eyes."
So the story follows nineteen-year-old Christy Huddleston, who leaves her Asheville, North Carolina, home one Sunday morning in 1912 and boards a train bound for Cutter Gap in the Smokies. There she would teach school and come to know , ,, and love the mountain people. There her own faith would be
1 tested and her heart would be torn.
Nearly a generation after the book was published, it was made into a CBS series, starring Kellie Martin, Tess Harper, and Tyne Daly. Then new children's books were written using the same basic characters and setting. But in between the initial publication and the TV reproduction, the success of the book was open-mg the eyes of media moguls to the potential of good, heartwarming family stories in the simpler life of the early 1.900s.
If Christy had been so successful m touching America's heart, why not try other kinds of similar stories? So the Walton family became part of America's TV fare during the 1970s and 1980s. After that came the popular Little House on the Prairie, adapted from the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
In a day when family values were being jettisoned and traditional morality was being left behind, American families seemed to be telling TV networks that there was still a market for shows that would strengthen the home and build character in children.