Christy recounts the church conference where her life changed:
…then an elderly man with a neatly clipped white goatee and a resonant voice — such a big voice for a small man! — had risen and begun to speak… He told the facts simply, almost starkly — how during the War Between the States he had ridden horseback through the Cumberland Mountains on his way to join the Confederate Army. Of course there were few inns in that area, so people in the mountain cabins had taken him in. He had been impressed with how poor the people were, yet how intelligent. Years later when he was a successful doctor in Arkansas, he had become desperately ill with scarlet fever. At a crisis point in his illness, he made a solemn vow that if he lived, he would go back to the Appalachians and help those people. He had sacrificed his fine medical practice to start mission work in Arkansas and Kentucky, and finally in the Great Smokies.
There he met someone with as much passion as he to help the mountain people: Miss Alice Henderson, …a new breed of woman, he said, who had braved hardship and danger to serve where she saw need… Miss Henderson had established three schools: Big Lick Spring, Cataleechie, and the Cutter Gap school, the latter only a couple of years before.
Dr. Ferrand explained that a year ago Miss Alice Henderson had placed her three schools under the auspices of his American Inland Mission, believing that this unifying of forces would strengthen the work…
Then Dr. Ferrand was painting vivid word pictures of individual “Highlanders” as he called them: of Minna Bess who had gotten married at fifteen; …of Uncle Jason whose sole income was gathering and selling galax leaves at twenty cents a thousand; of Rob Allen who wanted book learning so much that he came to school barefooted through six-foot snows.
I could still hear Dr. Ferrand’s voice… “Beyond the great mountains, outstretched hands and beseeching voices cry, ‘Come over and help us.’ These highlanders are your country men, your neighbors. Will you hear and help, or will you leave them to their distress and ignorance?
…After the benediction, I made my way slowly down the long, inclined aisle. Dr. Ferrand gripped my hand warmly, looked directly into my eyes.
My voice shook a little. “You asked for volunteers,” I told him. “You are looking at one.”
The little man’s goatee had bobbed up and down. “And for what do you volunteer, my child?”
“For the Highlanders — I could teach, anywhere you want to use me.
There was a long silence. The man’s eyes were penetrating, “you sure, child?”“Quite sure,” I said.
Dr. Ferrand in the novel Christy was based on the real-life Dr. Edward O. Guerrant, who kept a detailed diary of his activities throughout his life and published numerous books. He served in the Confederate Army in the Army of Tennessee, 1861-1865. He was a practicing doctor at Mt. Sterling, Ky., 1867-1873; a seminarian at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, 1873-1876 and a Presbyterian minister at several locations, including Louisville, Ky., 1876-1885. Ultimately, he became founder and president of the American Inland Mission or “Soul Winners Society” and editor of The Soul Winner.
The Ebenezer (“Cutter Gap”) Mission was under the auspices of the American Inland Mission and Dr. Guerrant visited it several times.
Egbert Smith, Executive Secretary of Foreign Missions in Nashville, Tennessee recalled that after establishing the American Inland Mission (also called the Society of Soul Winners), Dr. Guerrant’s efforts over the next ten years resulted in 879 schools with 39,400 pupils, and building 56 churches, schools and mission houses. Smith continued:
The work that Dr. Guerrant has done for the sequestered people of the Appalachians will remain his monument ages after his eloquent voice has fallen silent. It shows what one brave man can accomplish, with God behind him.
— Excerpts from Christy by Catherine Marshall.