How did I, a birthright Quaker and lifelong book lover, miss Christy, the 1967 classic novel by Catherine Marshall?

This runaway bestseller centers on 19-year-old Christy Huddleston of Asheville, NC, a privileged but passionate girl who leaves her tony Edwardian enclave for mission work in a poor Appalachian community in eastern Tennessee.

Like any good heroine, she picks up an unlikely mentor- in this case, it’s unconventional Quaker Alice Henderson- and a couple of very different admirers, while coming to know herself much more deeply. God, too, for that matter.

Nearly sixty years after its publication, what still works and what doesn’t?