While attending a 1912 Christian revival meeting, 19-year-old Christy Huddleson is fascinated to learn about an Appalachian mission program when the founder describes the work his group is doing and the needs of the Cutter Gap community. Christy, the daughter of a well-to-do family in
Asheville, North Carolina, is drawn to the idea of volunteering to teach the needy Cutter Gap students. Her parents are initially reluctant, but she persists and soon travels to the remote area in eastern Tennessee. From her first day in the
Appalachians, she is challenged by the primitive conditions and the
folk medicine beliefs of the
mountain people. Her mentor at the mission, a
Quaker named Alice Henderson, encourages her to notice also the beauty in the community and people, and to help preserve the best of the Appalachians in ways that will help the locals to become self-sustaining. Christy and her co-worker, minister David Grantland, try to educate local students. They also try to teach their neighbors an alternative to the
family feuding and cycle of revenge that have been a tradition for decades. Local physician Neill MacNeill is an
agnostic who grew up in the mountains; he seeks to make Christy more sympathetic to locals' concerns and traditions. Plot threads include Christy's experiences in the school house and her burgeoning friendships with local women, David's challenges in reaching a community that views him as an interfering outsider, family feuds, moonshiners who use schoolchildren as workers, and questions of faith. As Christy becomes better acquainted with MacNeill and Miss Alice, she discovers that the physician's late wife was Miss Alice's daughter (conceived when a predatory visiting minister raped Alice as a young woman). She learns that the physician's agnosticism was partly a reaction to the apparent injustice of his wife's death. Christy's faith is tried by these and other revelations, at the same time that she is romantically drawn both to the minister and the physician.
Allusions to history, geography, and science The fictional village of Cutter Gap is based on a community centered on the Chapel Hollow in the small Morgan Branch valley (NOT to be confused with Morgan Branch), a few miles west of
Del Rio in
Cocke County, Tennessee. Local landmarks associated with the story are marked for visitors, including the site of the Ebenezer Mission in Chapel Hollow. At a women's society meeting where Christy was giving a talk regarding the plight of those living in Cutter Gap, a woman shares with her information regarding the
Danish folk high school folk schools established by
Grundtvig, in which adults learned to use traditional folkways and crafts to become self-sustaining. A wholly fictional MacNeill performs
trepanation on an accident victim and studies
trachoma in the local population. Several characters suffer from
typhoid fever. The physician and others work to teach better
hygiene to the local population to prevent the disease. MacNeill lectures Christy on the origins of
moonshining and the reasons why many locals — including MacNeill — consider its prohibition to be an unfair block to their earning money from their crops. Christy eventually marries the physician. Catherine Marshall, the widow of Dr. Peter Marshall when she wrote the book, has been quoted as saying the book was about 75% historical. The main characters (the physician) and mountain woman descended from ancient royalty, are fictionalized. Catherine Marshall's mother, the model for Christy, married a minister. A detailed comparison between aspects of the novel and the history is detailed in the essay
Christy and Leonora: City Girl, Country Gal. ==Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations==