The Missionary S Wife

In The Missionary's Wife (1996) - his return to historical fiction - Tim Jeal expertly evoked Africa in the 1890s: a continent in turmoil as a horde of prospecters, hunters and missionaries scramble after gold, ivory, and converts. Young Englishwoman Clara Musson, though, travels with a different purpose. Jilted in love, doubting her Christian faith, she hoped to find renewed meaning as the wife of charismatic missionary Robert Haslam. What she finds is an obsessive zeal that will provoke a civil war. 'A powerful love story fleshed out with vivid historical detail, narrative tension and subtle post-colonial awareness... remarkably engaging and skilfully told.' Guardian 'Jeal brilliantly evokes the sights and sounds and smells of 1890s Africa.' Sunday Times 'Brilliantly plotted... a book of deep moral intelligence.' Lynn Barber, Literary Review 'Gripping... moving and convincing.' Allan Massie, Scotsman

WINNER OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION A GLOBE AND MAIL, CBC BOOKS, APPLE BOOKS, AND NOW TORONTO BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR In the tradition of The Poisonwood Bible and State of Wonder, a novel set in the rainforest of Ecuador about five women left behind when their missionary husbands are killed. Based on the shocking real-life events In 1956, a small group of evangelical Christian missionaries and their families journeyed to the rainforest in Ecuador intending to convert the Waorani, a people who had never had contact with the outside world. The plan was known as Operation Auca. After spending days dropping gifts from an aircraft, the five men in the party rashly entered the “intangible zone.” They were all killed, leaving their wives and children to fend for themselves. Five Wives is the fictionalized account of the real-life women who were left behind, and their struggles – with grief, with doubt, and with each other – as they continued to pursue their evangelical mission in the face of the explosion of fame that followed their husbands’ deaths. Five Wives is a riveting, often wrenching story of evangelism and its legacy, teeming with atmosphere and compelling characters and rich in emotional impact.

In the 19th century, Britain sent out missionaries to help Christianise the world. They brought their wives with them, and in 1853, a boarding school for missionary children was built in London. Eliza was a missionary daughter who joined the school in 1855, aged seven. She was one of only two children expelled 'for great misconduct' from the school during the first fifty years of its existence. She was sent back to her parents in Mauritius when she was fourteen years old. She fell in love with a young missionary, Herbert, and they got married three years later. They spent some time in Madagascar and Mauritius before they were sent to Japan in 1874 to run the newly-opened mission in Nagasaki. Eleven children later, Eliza died in 1887. The rest is fiction.

Being a missionary in Ivory Coast, West Africa is not only about dangers, hard work, and culture shock, interspersed with moments of high joy and deep sorrow; it is life found in the small and daily things, the quotidian experience which renders familiar a vastly different way of life, a life at the edge of the village. This book collects Lisa Leidenfrost's sketches of missionary life, compiled from letters sent home from Ivory Coast to her church in the United States, and they tell of the ordinary and extraordinary, the solemn and the playful, the mundane and the exotic, together creating a down-to-earth portrait of the Gospel at work in a family and society. For over sixteen years, Lisa Leidenfrost has lived, served, and raised four children in Ivory Coast with her husband, Csaba Leidenfrost, a Wycliffe translator to the Bakwe people.

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Mary Anne Leslie (1820-1853) was born in London, England. She spent nine years training at the "British and Foreign School Society's Central School, with the view of ultimately being trained for a teacher." She joined the Congregational Church in Union Street, Southwark, under Rev. John Arundel, and became secretary of the Sunday School. "She had a great love for missionary work." She married Thomas Henderson in 1843 and took over parenting of the children from his first marriage. She became superintendent of the Sabbath School at Lusignan. A separate building was built for her Bible class. She spent nine and one-half years ministering in Guiana.