Robert: feel free to repost my remarks on Dr. MacNeill.
"Christy" by Catherine Marshall is available from Amazon.com in paperback (Avon; ISBN: 0380001411; Reissue edition; January 1983). The book has a prologue which explains that Catherine was writing a fictionalized biography of her mother's teen years. Interestingly, the feature-length films that have been airing on the Hallmark channel include the circa-1970 mother-daughter dialogue and then flash back to
1910; the CBS television series did not.
Christy's real name was Leonore Whitaker. I think I found that in a biographical listing on Catherine Marshall. Leonore grew up in Asheville NC and met the mission administrator "Dr. Ferrand" at a summer camp meeting at Montreat NC, as described in the novel. I visited that area in 1994. Leonore had a younger sister who was still living in Montreat NC as of 1994.
"Christy" is rich in medical detail. Two backwoods surgical operations are described; Dr. MacNeill has a research interest in an eye disease; and a typhoid epidemic figures prominently in the plot.
Incidentally, Catherine Marshall's other semifiction book, "Julie", is autobiographical of her own teen years. It is there that we learn Christy ended up marrying the preacher. After leaving the mission school, he pastored for a while in Johnson City TN, and that is where Catherine (her real first name was Sarah!) was born.
Best regards,
Joseph H. Lechner, Ph.D. Joseph Lechner Joseph.Lechner@MVNC.EDU
Health prof posting by Dr. Lechner, by permission
Some of you may be familiar with the character Dr. Neil MacNeill in the novel "Christy" by Catherine Marshall, in the CBS drama series (circa 1994) based on that book, and in several recent feature-length movies that also are based on the book. The doctor really existed; "Christy" is a fact-based work with the names changed. The character Christy Huddleston was based on Leonore Whitaker, the author's mother.
"Christy" is set in the Great Smokies circa 1910. MacNeill grew up in the mountains and was befriended as a teenager by a group of vacationing physicians whom he served as a hunting guide. They saw the poverty and lack of medical care in that community, and decided to finance MacNeill's education in the belief that he would return home to practice, which he did.
Lynn Durel is right that physicians may not want to go to a disadvantaged area, practice there for most of their careers, and raise their families there. That they were foreign-born and that socioeconomic conditions are better in rural USA than in their nation of origin may not change this. Physicians are more likely to serve an underserved area if it is their home and they have emotional, family, ethnic and cultural ties to it. The character Neil MacNeill loved his mountain cove, loved its people, and devoted his career to them. That much is true to life. In the movie I saw last night, MacNeill ended up marrying the teacher, Christy. That part didn't turn out that way in real life; she really married the preacher.
Joseph H. Lechner, Ph.D. Joseph Lechner Joseph.Lechner@MVNC.EDU