Josephine Cunnington Edwards

I didn’t like the main character of this book so I struggled to get into this. Towards the end of the book there was a long section that preached Seventh Day Adventist theology. I’m not a member of the SDA church, and even if I was I don’t think this is good fiction writing. So I was almost going to give this two stars. But the book ended so nicely that I stayed on three.
The last part of the book felt like a biography so I did some googling to find out if there really was a Johnny Lee show more but I couldn’t find anything on him. So I’ve shelved it as fiction. show less

I read this one when I was a boy and am currently re-reading it on line after all that time. Am amazed to find that (despite its religious overtones) I am still a little boy sitting in a chair, curled up, and lost in a world I wish I'd been kidnapped into. The adult in me cries out that it can't have been like that - the child thankfully ignores him.

Billy Brey was a Cornish evangelist whose name was a household word among the Bible, Christian Methodists of southwest England during the middle years of the 19th century. Aggressive, eccentric, untutored, yet possessing a singular grace and charm, he was unpredictable. In both his pulpit utterances and methods of labor. Christ and Satan were real entities to him, and his audible conversations with them took on the spirit of fellowship with one and of challenge to the other. Whenever he show more preached, even standing room was at a premium, and on occasion as many would be listening through the open windows of the chapel, as were seated in the sanctuary. He often irritated the established churchmen and formal religionists of his day, but in face–to–face contention with them, is radiant countenance and unashamed zeal conciliated the most obtrusive. show less

Where the Livubwe River flows down into the mighty Zambezi, the village called Milongo once sprawled out over the rocks and little rises. The bwala in the center of the village, beaten flat almost to iron hardness, had been made by the footsteps of many generations. It was here in this little village by the river that Malinki was born to Mwasekera, a slave girl who had been sold by her own brother for four quarts of meal, and then captured by Angoni warriors and given as a wife to one of her show more captors. Into such a life Malinki was born only to be sold with his mother by his father to another trader - this time for a gun, some bullets, a length of cloth, and a jug of rum. This is the story of the struggle of Malinki and his mother for their existence in Africa, called in those days the Dark Continent. But it is more than the struggle for existence; it shows the courage and strength of one born in slavery to forge ahead and make a better life. The story shows the influence that can be exerted by men of principle as well as by unprincipled ones. This is the story of the beginning of mission work in central Africa. It is the story of a man, Malinki, who became Nyasaland's (now Malawi) first African teacher to hold a teaching certificate. The story of a man who willingly became a slave - a slave to Christ and His cause. show less