Splendor in the Dust

As the British were leaving India in 1946-47, the subcontinent was violently being divided into two nations, India and Pakistan, along religious lines. Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, rioting and mayhem were rampant, and nation-building seemed a remote possibility. An American missionary family found themselves attempting to live both private and public lives while bringing Christ's message to the rural people of the Western Ghats, a low mountain range in western India. They were welcomed by the people as they did evangelical, agricultural, medical, and educational rural uplift work. Over the next 20 years, amid the dust and the deluges, the leopards and the lizards, Christian youth stepped forward, competent and eager, to take over the work of the Church and find their place in the vibrant, emerging nation of India.