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A Different Sun
Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. When Emma Davis reads the words of Isaiah 6:8 in her room at a Georgia women’s college, she understands her true calling: to become a missionary. It is a leap of faith that sweeps her away to Africa in an odyssey of personal discovery, tremendous hardship, and profound transformation.
For the earnest, headstrong daughter of a prosperous slave owner, living among the Yoruba people is utterly unlike Emma’s sheltered childhood—as is her new husband, Henry Bowman. Twenty years her senior, the mercurial Henry is the object of Emma’s mad first love, intensifying the sensations of all they see and share together. Each day brings new tragedy and heartbreak, and each day, Emma somehow finds the hope, passion, and strength of will to press onward. Through it all, Henry’s first gift to Emma, a simple writing box—with its red leather-bound diary and space for a few cherished keepsakes—becomes her closest confidant, Emma’s last connection to a life that seems, in this strange new world, like a passing memory.
A tale of social and spiritual awakening; a dispatch from a difficult era at home and abroad; and a meditation on faith, freedom, and desire, A Different Sun is a captivating fiction debut.
For the earnest, headstrong daughter of a prosperous slave owner, living among the Yoruba people is utterly unlike Emma’s sheltered childhood—as is her new husband, Henry Bowman. Twenty years her senior, the mercurial Henry is the object of Emma’s mad first love, intensifying the sensations of all they see and share together. Each day brings new tragedy and heartbreak, and each day, Emma somehow finds the hope, passion, and strength of will to press onward. Through it all, Henry’s first gift to Emma, a simple writing box—with its red leather-bound diary and space for a few cherished keepsakes—becomes her closest confidant, Emma’s last connection to a life that seems, in this strange new world, like a passing memory.
A tale of social and spiritual awakening; a dispatch from a difficult era at home and abroad; and a meditation on faith, freedom, and desire, A Different Sun is a captivating fiction debut.
400 pages, Paperback
First published April 2, 2013
155 people are currently reading
982 people want to read
About the author
Elaine Neil Orr
9 books131 followersAfter surviving end stage renal disease in my early forties with the gift of two transplants (kidney and pancreas), I took a right turn in my writing life: from scholarship to creative writing. Because I was born and grew up in Nigeria, my memoir and fiction are trans-Atlantic. I am keenly interested in place, not as a backdrop for stories but as a character. What I love most about writing is the practice of it. Writing, I am meditating. "How exactly do I describe the feeling of heartbreak? Does the heart really hurt?" "When my character enters this river, what is she thinking?" The normal world is lost to me; I am in a transcendent realm of creation. Being there is one of the greatest joys I know. I love being alone in nature: walking, catching a glimpse of the blue heron, feeling the wind on my neck. I try to live in the faith that all I really need is already with me.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 147 reviews
July 15, 2013
Some writers of historical fiction are masters of capturing a time period, others at transporting us to a certain place. Rare are those novelists who are equally skilled at both, as Elaine Neil Orr is. A Different Sun is the story of Emma Davis Bowman, who we first meet in 1840, a child of eight thirsting for knowledge and just become painfully cognizant of the injustices in her privileged world: her parents are slave-holders in rural Georgia. She yearns to be educated beyond the social pleasantries expected of a young woman of her class; she yearns even more for direction in her life, for the earnest work of redemption through service. (The novel is inspired by the vestigial diaries kept by the first Southern Baptist missionaries to Africa, and the author's own experiences as daughter to modern day missionaries in Nigeria.)
The act of writing, and the sacredness of that art, is a theme from the beginning. Young Emma is at last given the paper, pen, and ink she has asked for. As she begins to make a journal, she looks at the words she has written and thinks, "This is mine." As a wedding gift, the handsome preacher who has won her presents her with a beautifully crafted letter box with a little drop down writing surface and secret compartment. This, and her diary within, becomes a focal point to Emma's life in Africa.
A Different Sun has three narrators, and the main body of the book covers the two years the Bowmans spend in Africa as missionaries. Emma herself tells much of the story; her husband Henry Bowman, an enigmatic, charismatic and deeply troubled former Texas Ranger, is the second narrator, and the third is an African, Jacob, who serves as assistant, guide, and friend to them both in their adopted land. Much to her credit, Orr keeps each very much a child of their own time, sex, and country. There are few things more disappointing in a work of historical fiction than to have that fictive dream shattered, when suddenly the illusion is destroyed by a character's having an all-too modern viewpoint. Orr is equally skilled depicting men as women; Henry and Jacob tell of their lives and feelings in their own way and with an admirable authenticity. She also has a light touch with description, everything economical and wonderfully fresh. Here is the newly-wed Emma, on way to taking ship to Africa, encountering a big Eastern city for the first time:
"In Boston all of the houses were tall and smashed together like books on a shelf. The horses seemed to prance higher as if they had no where to go but up."
And here is Jacob, recounting the horror of being captured and sold as a slave as a child:
"Ah. That day from boyhood. At first, he thought it might be some spirit festival he had fallen into - the way he tripped and was pulled into the air, as if a great bird had captured him. The world went upside down, all the trees coming out of the sky instead of up from the ground. His head spun and he screamed. Those ugly men shouting in rude tongues....He had fallen into a very bad world."
A Different Sun is the story of a missionary adventure, yet it wears its religion lightly. There is no smug moralizing. The three main characters are ardently, quietly Christian in their own ways, suitable to their own sensibilities. Henry Bowman turned to preaching in reparation after a wild and violent youth of soldiering and carousing. Because we now know much about the harshness imposed upon native peoples by whites trying to Christianize them, Henry's innate kindness, respect, and humaneness comes as a graceful and pleasant surprise. Intelligent and passionate Emma seeks a life of service, the spectre of her father's slave-holding always over her. And Jacob readily embraced the faith of the English who had redeemed him from his slavery and educated him.
Emma, Henry, and Jacob are exceptional personalities, fully drawn with rich interior lives we are granted access to. Each faces profound moral challenges, and are guided by their faith through the greatest temptations and trials. But even the minor characters - "Uncle" Eli, an old slave on her parent's plantation who Emma realizes has set her life's course; and in Africa, the local, often times comical, king and his harem of wives; the native healer, the powerful Iyalode, a village woman of wealth and sagacity; and the native children all leave a deep impression on the reader. As does the wild and demanding African landscape itself, by turns parched and flooding with seasonal rains.
I had wished for one thing more of this book, and that is a map of Africa as it was known in the 1860's, which I wish the publisher had included. A few physical benchmarks showing the Bowman's progress through what was then known as "the Dark Continent" would have been welcome and often referred to.
This is a story of surpassing beauty. As the book nears its conclusion, it tunes to a higher and sharper key, with language so intense that the imagery shimmers. It is a tour de force of imagination, emotion, and spiritual longing.
The act of writing, and the sacredness of that art, is a theme from the beginning. Young Emma is at last given the paper, pen, and ink she has asked for. As she begins to make a journal, she looks at the words she has written and thinks, "This is mine." As a wedding gift, the handsome preacher who has won her presents her with a beautifully crafted letter box with a little drop down writing surface and secret compartment. This, and her diary within, becomes a focal point to Emma's life in Africa.
A Different Sun has three narrators, and the main body of the book covers the two years the Bowmans spend in Africa as missionaries. Emma herself tells much of the story; her husband Henry Bowman, an enigmatic, charismatic and deeply troubled former Texas Ranger, is the second narrator, and the third is an African, Jacob, who serves as assistant, guide, and friend to them both in their adopted land. Much to her credit, Orr keeps each very much a child of their own time, sex, and country. There are few things more disappointing in a work of historical fiction than to have that fictive dream shattered, when suddenly the illusion is destroyed by a character's having an all-too modern viewpoint. Orr is equally skilled depicting men as women; Henry and Jacob tell of their lives and feelings in their own way and with an admirable authenticity. She also has a light touch with description, everything economical and wonderfully fresh. Here is the newly-wed Emma, on way to taking ship to Africa, encountering a big Eastern city for the first time:
"In Boston all of the houses were tall and smashed together like books on a shelf. The horses seemed to prance higher as if they had no where to go but up."
And here is Jacob, recounting the horror of being captured and sold as a slave as a child:
"Ah. That day from boyhood. At first, he thought it might be some spirit festival he had fallen into - the way he tripped and was pulled into the air, as if a great bird had captured him. The world went upside down, all the trees coming out of the sky instead of up from the ground. His head spun and he screamed. Those ugly men shouting in rude tongues....He had fallen into a very bad world."
A Different Sun is the story of a missionary adventure, yet it wears its religion lightly. There is no smug moralizing. The three main characters are ardently, quietly Christian in their own ways, suitable to their own sensibilities. Henry Bowman turned to preaching in reparation after a wild and violent youth of soldiering and carousing. Because we now know much about the harshness imposed upon native peoples by whites trying to Christianize them, Henry's innate kindness, respect, and humaneness comes as a graceful and pleasant surprise. Intelligent and passionate Emma seeks a life of service, the spectre of her father's slave-holding always over her. And Jacob readily embraced the faith of the English who had redeemed him from his slavery and educated him.
Emma, Henry, and Jacob are exceptional personalities, fully drawn with rich interior lives we are granted access to. Each faces profound moral challenges, and are guided by their faith through the greatest temptations and trials. But even the minor characters - "Uncle" Eli, an old slave on her parent's plantation who Emma realizes has set her life's course; and in Africa, the local, often times comical, king and his harem of wives; the native healer, the powerful Iyalode, a village woman of wealth and sagacity; and the native children all leave a deep impression on the reader. As does the wild and demanding African landscape itself, by turns parched and flooding with seasonal rains.
I had wished for one thing more of this book, and that is a map of Africa as it was known in the 1860's, which I wish the publisher had included. A few physical benchmarks showing the Bowman's progress through what was then known as "the Dark Continent" would have been welcome and often referred to.
This is a story of surpassing beauty. As the book nears its conclusion, it tunes to a higher and sharper key, with language so intense that the imagery shimmers. It is a tour de force of imagination, emotion, and spiritual longing.
June 16, 2013
It's not easy these days to find a novel that offers both a good story and elegant prose, but Elaine Orr's A Different Sun does just that. I was hooked on Emma's story from the first pages and followed her transition from naivete to awareness, from child to woman through page after page of compelling narrative. Her growing understanding of the African people, language, and traditions, and finally her acceptance and practice of the religion developed convincingly. Also satisfying was the realization of her own complicity as the child of slave-owners, particularly in regard to Uncle Eli and the power of the gift he gave to her. A Different Sun is not an easy read nor is it a quick one, but it is most definitely worth picking up and delving into for a rich experience.
May 9, 2013
Chillingly beautiful. This novel filled me with compassion for its characters, admiration for their faith and pioneering, and a sense of spiritual wonderment I hadn't experienced since reading Toni Morrison's _Beloved_. I can't say enough good things about this book. It brings Africa to life and makes me want to move there.
August 4, 2014
I loved this book. I quickly stopped comparing it to Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible because it stands alone. It is beautifully written and I could barely wait to see what would happen in situation after situation. The fact that it had a strong historical component and was written by Elaine Neil Orr who grew up in Nigeria herself gave it stunning authenticity. It was a very quick read for me. I did not want to read it a few pages at a time, but wanted to wait until I could devote myself to reading it through, large sections at a time. The denouement was everything I had hoped and more and came as a surprise in a way that spoke volumes of truth that both Christians and non-Christians alike might use to illuminate their own lives. Emma's matured realization of herself and her family's role in America's slave-holding,and regarding the slave trade itself evoked how difficult it is to grasp that we are not always as evolved, as righteous, as good as we hold ourselves up to be, that prejudice is obstinate and generational but that intelligence and hard worn experience with placing oneself in another's culture can have intellectual and healing powers to those whose spirits prove ultimately to be strong and brave enough to learn from these experiences. It was a progression beautifully captured.
July 26, 2016
I've given a blurb for Elaine Neil Orr's novel A DIFFERENT SUN, and I meant every word of praise. It is a compelling story, finely researched, delicately told, compassionate and heartfelt. It has a quality I treasure, that of being like one of the "good, old-fashioned novels" I grew up reading and being shaped by...there is no emphasis on pyrotechnic language, the author does not draw attention to herself through stylistic embellishments, instead, she quietly attends to the life of Emma Davis, a 19th century American missionary wife who travels with her husband to Africa - a young woman who learns deep lessons of love and endurance from the very people she had assumed she was crossing an ocean to
teach - I recommend this novel to anyone who loves being cast under the spell of a time and place lost to us, with a woman at its center, at its heart, as contemporary and as alive as you or I.
teach - I recommend this novel to anyone who loves being cast under the spell of a time and place lost to us, with a woman at its center, at its heart, as contemporary and as alive as you or I.
June 2, 2013
The only disappointing thing about A Different Sun by Elaine Orr was that it ended.
Orr's characters become close friends to the reader in this vivid tale of a missionary's wife who travels with him to Africa in the 1850's. Full of evocative descriptions and emotions, I found myself compelled to keep reading in order to find out what would happen to Emma and the African "family" and friends she makes along her journey. When the novel ended in what felt like mid-stream, I wanted more.
What happens to the young couple? To their child? The future is left up to the reader's imagination. What you come to know of Emma, Henry, and the others will help you as you imagine the way their lives unfold--perhaps that is enough.
I'm thankful to Goodreads' FirstReads for the ARC I won that allowed me to read this wonderful novel. I will recommend this to my book club as a future selection!
Orr's characters become close friends to the reader in this vivid tale of a missionary's wife who travels with him to Africa in the 1850's. Full of evocative descriptions and emotions, I found myself compelled to keep reading in order to find out what would happen to Emma and the African "family" and friends she makes along her journey. When the novel ended in what felt like mid-stream, I wanted more.
What happens to the young couple? To their child? The future is left up to the reader's imagination. What you come to know of Emma, Henry, and the others will help you as you imagine the way their lives unfold--perhaps that is enough.
I'm thankful to Goodreads' FirstReads for the ARC I won that allowed me to read this wonderful novel. I will recommend this to my book club as a future selection!
September 1, 2016
A Different Sun is an epic, atmospheric and compelling a novel as A Passage to India mixed with something of a mid-1800’s version of Cry, The Beloved Country. Set in the slave South, the novel follows the life of Emma Davis, a native of Georgia, but no Scarlett O’Hara. Emma feels called to mission work and dreams of traveling to the Africa of her imagination gathered from stories of a beloved slave.
As fate would have it she meets Henry Bowman, who like Emma is called to missionary work and is soon wedded and bound for Yorubaland (Nigeria) in West Africa. Not surprisingly, upon arrival Emma is overwhelmed by West Africa and immediately takes to her new home. Her husband, however, is afflicted by a variety of aliments and is restless to go in search of more challenging missionary work. He challenges her desire to build a church and does not approve of her friendships with the locals.
Indeed, Emma finds herself in a netherworld of her past and her present. She has unintentionally stepped from one world where white people own black people in a rigid caste system, forbidding them to learn to read or write, depriving them of family relationships and where they are bought and sold as livestock and into another where black people are their own people, with their own culture, with its own community and social structure, they are property owners and possess a wisdom of which she had heretofore lived entirely ignorant.
Truly, Emma faces an overwhelming realization that her life was never what she thought it to be; nothing she believed in or accepted is rooted in truth. Truly, a precipice that few ever face in their lifetime and yet here is this young woman, virtually alone with her discovery. Faced with her realization and as she begins to work through her conflicting emotions the reader is able to watch as Emma becomes a woman. Her life now set against the captivating majesty of Africa Emma never falters from her dedication to work as a missionary. Indeed, the novel very convincingly portrays the struggle and hardship of that calling.
As a student of African History I was anxious for Orr to address how the move to West Africa had affected Emma’s ideas of slavery, it is after all an institution she grew up surrounded by and accepted without question. When Orr does address these issues she does so in a way that I found not only original but profoundly thought provoking for the reader. Emma comes to realize that slavery dehumanizes not only the slave, but the slave trader, and the slave owner, including herself and all her family, because it is not and can never be a benevolent institution, nor is it in keeping with the teachings of the Bible.
A Different Sun is a masterfully written novel that manages to deal with the atrociousness that was the West African slave trade thorough the eyes of a compassionate young woman who has slowly discovered, not only the truth, but of her part in it. In truth, Orr takes a political complex subject and makes it human and approachable and in so doing it looses its taboo. It is through Emma’s looking back and looking into the future that Orr is able to compare and contrast the two worlds of the slave south and West Africa. In this examination Orr so skillfully leads her reader through a discovery of life’s intimacies and losses, wonderful moments of a character’s personal insight and the appreciation of the majestic natural beauty of Africa, a land that God created. I hope her beautiful narrative of this wonderfully diverse continent will inspire those that have the pleasure of reading her novel.
When I was reading A Different Sun I was struck by how masterfully and skillfully Orr had presented the struggles of a fictional character against a larger historical backdrop. I have to admit I nearly fell out of my chair when I finally discovered that these characters actually existed. Lurana Davis Bowen (Emma), was indeed the daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, who married Thomas Jefferson Bowe (Henry) and travelled as missionaries West Africa in the mid nineteenth-century. Indeed, they were the first Southern Baptist missionaries in Africa. Orr relied heavily on Lurana’s journal for her narrative, but the novel’s wonderfully descriptive and transporting description of Africa is due to Elaine Orr’s own upbringing in Nigeria.
As fate would have it she meets Henry Bowman, who like Emma is called to missionary work and is soon wedded and bound for Yorubaland (Nigeria) in West Africa. Not surprisingly, upon arrival Emma is overwhelmed by West Africa and immediately takes to her new home. Her husband, however, is afflicted by a variety of aliments and is restless to go in search of more challenging missionary work. He challenges her desire to build a church and does not approve of her friendships with the locals.
Indeed, Emma finds herself in a netherworld of her past and her present. She has unintentionally stepped from one world where white people own black people in a rigid caste system, forbidding them to learn to read or write, depriving them of family relationships and where they are bought and sold as livestock and into another where black people are their own people, with their own culture, with its own community and social structure, they are property owners and possess a wisdom of which she had heretofore lived entirely ignorant.
Truly, Emma faces an overwhelming realization that her life was never what she thought it to be; nothing she believed in or accepted is rooted in truth. Truly, a precipice that few ever face in their lifetime and yet here is this young woman, virtually alone with her discovery. Faced with her realization and as she begins to work through her conflicting emotions the reader is able to watch as Emma becomes a woman. Her life now set against the captivating majesty of Africa Emma never falters from her dedication to work as a missionary. Indeed, the novel very convincingly portrays the struggle and hardship of that calling.
As a student of African History I was anxious for Orr to address how the move to West Africa had affected Emma’s ideas of slavery, it is after all an institution she grew up surrounded by and accepted without question. When Orr does address these issues she does so in a way that I found not only original but profoundly thought provoking for the reader. Emma comes to realize that slavery dehumanizes not only the slave, but the slave trader, and the slave owner, including herself and all her family, because it is not and can never be a benevolent institution, nor is it in keeping with the teachings of the Bible.
A Different Sun is a masterfully written novel that manages to deal with the atrociousness that was the West African slave trade thorough the eyes of a compassionate young woman who has slowly discovered, not only the truth, but of her part in it. In truth, Orr takes a political complex subject and makes it human and approachable and in so doing it looses its taboo. It is through Emma’s looking back and looking into the future that Orr is able to compare and contrast the two worlds of the slave south and West Africa. In this examination Orr so skillfully leads her reader through a discovery of life’s intimacies and losses, wonderful moments of a character’s personal insight and the appreciation of the majestic natural beauty of Africa, a land that God created. I hope her beautiful narrative of this wonderfully diverse continent will inspire those that have the pleasure of reading her novel.
When I was reading A Different Sun I was struck by how masterfully and skillfully Orr had presented the struggles of a fictional character against a larger historical backdrop. I have to admit I nearly fell out of my chair when I finally discovered that these characters actually existed. Lurana Davis Bowen (Emma), was indeed the daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, who married Thomas Jefferson Bowe (Henry) and travelled as missionaries West Africa in the mid nineteenth-century. Indeed, they were the first Southern Baptist missionaries in Africa. Orr relied heavily on Lurana’s journal for her narrative, but the novel’s wonderfully descriptive and transporting description of Africa is due to Elaine Orr’s own upbringing in Nigeria.
May 31, 2013
Elaine Orr's A Different Sun takes a 19th century woman, a child of slave-owners, and opens her heart and mind to African people in Africa, fracturing the easy assumptions and moral questions of her time. Traveling with her missionary husband, Emma lives among the Yoruba people, with a Muslim man for a helper, and Yoruba women as spiritual guides. This novel turns her life on its head, letting in the light of a different sun, a brighter sun. Beautifully written, compassionate, and accurate, the novel draws on historical research into the life of a missionary woman and the author's heart-home in Africa, where she was raised, a young white American, among Yoruba people. A truly satisfying tale in a morally complex world.
August 29, 2013
I found this book to be beautiful and moving. Seeing Africa through the eyes of Emma made me long to be there with her myself. The interwoven tale of Uncle Eli and her own Homecoming were touching and brilliant.
March 24, 2013
This is for anyone who loved The Poisonwood Bible: what it's like to be living in a remote jungle village when your missionary husband starts to unravel.
May 4, 2013
Lovely writing. This book is one that will stay with you. It is an intriguing look at a time and place, with a well-drawn and compelling heroine.
July 23, 2013
Elaine Orr's A Different Sun is absolutely exquisite. I haven't read a book this skillfully and convincingly written in a long time. Highly recommended.
July 4, 2019
This marvelous and powerful book came out of nowhere and knocked my socks off.
It started out reminding me of The Kitchen House, and then became a bit like The Poisonwood Bible. There are definitely shades of The Grass is Singing here and there. These comparisons are meant as a compliment. But it’s also unfair, because A Different Sun absolutely stands on its own merit.
Emma is the younger daughter of a wealthy land-owner (and slave-holder) in pre-Civil War Georgia. She is eight years old when we meet her in 1840, and she enjoys a relationship with Uncle Eli – an elderly slave on her family’s plantation. I loved the author’s decision to open the narrative when Emma is so young, even though ultimately, it is the story of Emma’s adult years as a wife and missionary in West Africa. The story’s core follows the experiences and trials Emma endures in Africa. We watch her respond, stumble, and grow. But truly, everything we learn leading up to that time is necessary and relevant.
The second half is maybe not as strong as the first, but is still quite good; and the ending is perfect. This is an excellent story with hidden depths, and exceptionally well-written. There’s so much packed in here to think about.
More people should know about this book.
September 13, 2013
I am going to read this book over again.
In the historical note in the back of the book, the author tells about her desire to write about the first Southern Baptist missionary couple to Africa after reading and getting inspiration from the wife’s diary.
“I first imagined a work of creative nonfiction in which I would seek to expand Lurana’s story, using all the historical evidence I could find, as well as my own experience. I found instead that fiction was the best medium for conveying not Lurana’s story per se but my own vision of what might have happened when a young, well-to-do woman from Georgia fell in love with a former Texas calvaryman and traveled to Yorubland. What motivated her? What did she long for? What were her limitations? How did her marriage evolve under the duress brought on by illness and profound loss?"
Elaine Orr’s attempt at answering these questions (and more), I believe, from a fictional standpoint, were quite successful! “A Different Sun” is about a young bride, Emma, who accompanies her missionary husband to Africa.
“A Different Sun” is not only a missionary-to-Africa story, it is also a novel about marraige and survival amidst hardship. It includes themes on slavery, tolerance, and inter-cultural relationships. It develops minor themes such as variety within cultures and learning to adapt to a foreign society’s customs, religion, superstitions and missionary zeal, and human frailty and weakness… and portrays challenges within ever-more-expanding themes such as friendship and loneliness, temptation, illness and bearing children in a foreign land.
Elaine Neil Orr, a child herself of missionary parents and a professor of English and native born in Nigeria, writes insightfully, competently and engagingly (where DID she get her style from? hence my need to give this a second read in future), about Emma and Henry Bowman, missionaries to Africa in the 1850′s. At first I wasn’t sure I would be able to progress with the novel but the more I read, the more I found I wanted to read.
As the novel continues we are impressed with the love of Africa and its people that grows on Emma, but the reader also can’t help but wonder, “why does Henry seem to treat his African native servant, Jacob, with more respect than his own wife?” “what is this pull that Uncle Eli seems to have on Emma’s childhood memories, and the corresponding link with her life in Africa?”
“My own parents were missionaries. I knew how large and complex our lives were. But in this young woman’s diary I found sentences so compressed, they seemed nearly to explode.
Elaine Orr’s writing is lovely and you will not regret reading this novel, although you may find it frustrating at times to be able to read it in sympathy with the characters’ foibles and decisions.
By the end of the book, I liked Henry and Emma a lot better. They had grown and learned from their experiences. Rather than be defeated by the challenges they faced, they learn to adjust and take stock of where they are and where they want to be. Henry learns to be more patient. Emma learns humility and about hypocrisy.
In the historical note in the back of the book, the author tells about her desire to write about the first Southern Baptist missionary couple to Africa after reading and getting inspiration from the wife’s diary.
“I first imagined a work of creative nonfiction in which I would seek to expand Lurana’s story, using all the historical evidence I could find, as well as my own experience. I found instead that fiction was the best medium for conveying not Lurana’s story per se but my own vision of what might have happened when a young, well-to-do woman from Georgia fell in love with a former Texas calvaryman and traveled to Yorubland. What motivated her? What did she long for? What were her limitations? How did her marriage evolve under the duress brought on by illness and profound loss?"
Elaine Orr’s attempt at answering these questions (and more), I believe, from a fictional standpoint, were quite successful! “A Different Sun” is about a young bride, Emma, who accompanies her missionary husband to Africa.
“A Different Sun” is not only a missionary-to-Africa story, it is also a novel about marraige and survival amidst hardship. It includes themes on slavery, tolerance, and inter-cultural relationships. It develops minor themes such as variety within cultures and learning to adapt to a foreign society’s customs, religion, superstitions and missionary zeal, and human frailty and weakness… and portrays challenges within ever-more-expanding themes such as friendship and loneliness, temptation, illness and bearing children in a foreign land.
Elaine Neil Orr, a child herself of missionary parents and a professor of English and native born in Nigeria, writes insightfully, competently and engagingly (where DID she get her style from? hence my need to give this a second read in future), about Emma and Henry Bowman, missionaries to Africa in the 1850′s. At first I wasn’t sure I would be able to progress with the novel but the more I read, the more I found I wanted to read.
As the novel continues we are impressed with the love of Africa and its people that grows on Emma, but the reader also can’t help but wonder, “why does Henry seem to treat his African native servant, Jacob, with more respect than his own wife?” “what is this pull that Uncle Eli seems to have on Emma’s childhood memories, and the corresponding link with her life in Africa?”
“My own parents were missionaries. I knew how large and complex our lives were. But in this young woman’s diary I found sentences so compressed, they seemed nearly to explode.
Elaine Orr’s writing is lovely and you will not regret reading this novel, although you may find it frustrating at times to be able to read it in sympathy with the characters’ foibles and decisions.
By the end of the book, I liked Henry and Emma a lot better. They had grown and learned from their experiences. Rather than be defeated by the challenges they faced, they learn to adjust and take stock of where they are and where they want to be. Henry learns to be more patient. Emma learns humility and about hypocrisy.
August 13, 2020
This book was simply not what I was expecting—I’m not sure anyone could truly anticipate it, to be honest. A Different Sun is advertised as a story of African missionaries, but it was just…strange. Both the narrative style and the content itself were oddly hard to grasp. I don’t really know what to make of Orr’s story here. This book is an enigma.
The first noteworthy aspect of A Different Sun is Elaine Neil Orr’s writing style. For me, it was detached, remote, and clinical. The book often read like a very dry biography, dressed up with some strange metaphors and spiritual references. It wasn’t the kind of third person that get’s you right in the perspective character’s head; it was like watching the character from far away, through a telescope. I didn’t feel immersed or engaged at all.
The other problem I had is that, really, this book wasn’t about missionaries. At least, not in the way I’d thought it would be. Most of the text was spent writing about the protagonist’s marital problems, her whining, and her husband’s constant and vague illnesses. The fact that they were missionaries in Africa didn’t seem to be a major issue. You can write the disillusioned wife, uncommunicative marriage plotline anywhere.
The unique African setting was another draw to the book, but I wasn’t as charmed as I’d hoped to be in that respect, either. I didn’t feel like the author spent very much time at all dealing with Yoruba culture or landscape. Most of the information the reader received was through the filter of the protagonist’s judgmental observations ("The women are half-naked! How positively revolting!").
I guess I was just expecting more from this. The jacket copy seemed to advertise a sort of uplifting story about struggle and passion, etc. Instead, I found A Different Sun to be a strangely written story about a bratty wife and her proud, petty husband. Whatever Orr intended to do with this story, whatever feelings/thoughts I was supposed to have, it wasn’t happening.
Really, I don’t know quite what to do with A Different Sun. I can definitely say it’s not a poorly-written book, but it fell flat for me all the same. It’s a different angle on missionary life for sure.
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The first noteworthy aspect of A Different Sun is Elaine Neil Orr’s writing style. For me, it was detached, remote, and clinical. The book often read like a very dry biography, dressed up with some strange metaphors and spiritual references. It wasn’t the kind of third person that get’s you right in the perspective character’s head; it was like watching the character from far away, through a telescope. I didn’t feel immersed or engaged at all.
The other problem I had is that, really, this book wasn’t about missionaries. At least, not in the way I’d thought it would be. Most of the text was spent writing about the protagonist’s marital problems, her whining, and her husband’s constant and vague illnesses. The fact that they were missionaries in Africa didn’t seem to be a major issue. You can write the disillusioned wife, uncommunicative marriage plotline anywhere.
The unique African setting was another draw to the book, but I wasn’t as charmed as I’d hoped to be in that respect, either. I didn’t feel like the author spent very much time at all dealing with Yoruba culture or landscape. Most of the information the reader received was through the filter of the protagonist’s judgmental observations ("The women are half-naked! How positively revolting!").
I guess I was just expecting more from this. The jacket copy seemed to advertise a sort of uplifting story about struggle and passion, etc. Instead, I found A Different Sun to be a strangely written story about a bratty wife and her proud, petty husband. Whatever Orr intended to do with this story, whatever feelings/thoughts I was supposed to have, it wasn’t happening.
Really, I don’t know quite what to do with A Different Sun. I can definitely say it’s not a poorly-written book, but it fell flat for me all the same. It’s a different angle on missionary life for sure.
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October 31, 2013
Elaine Neil Orr's A DIFFERENT SUN is a zinger of a historical novel about a zinger of a missionary to Africa! Fans of Orr's memoir set in Yoruba will be familiar with this amazing setting of Yoruba again, albeit fiction. But they may also be surprised, and delighted, to have any preconceived notions of the word "missionary" turned topsy-turvy.
Emma marries Henry Bowman, a Baptist missionary, and they go from Georgia to Yoruba to "save" the people of Yoruba. Emma is certain that she knows exactly how to best assist Henry. The loss of her own child and an unexpected affinity for Jacob, their house helper in Ijaye, intervene. It is she, ultimately, who needs "saving." Jacob says it best, "You speak of God as if you are an only child. Ah!"
Orr manages to inhabit the characters with the unique voice and sensibility required of each character. In so doing she manages to set forth universal truths rarely set down in fiction. One example is as follows: "In Emma flowed the tide of sorrow women feel when husbands tout their power but expose only weakness."
Fellow writers will identify with the importance of Emma's precious writing box, and how it, at one point, becomes the focal point of written conversation between her and Jacob.
And get ready, readers! You will love reading about Emma's emotions of a physical attraction so delicately understated, so sensitive and needy, yet rightly kept in check. Jacob is the catalyst for Emma's own salvation with the rituals of his culture and religion.
More lasting than a fantastic read is the scholarship that undergirds the fiction in this novel. Orr, already well known for her published work as a scholar, has an impressive listing of her research on this topic of missionaries in Africa.
Scholarship, however, is not distracting or heavy as it can be in some fiction set in a past time; on the contrary, it seems as natural as Orr's varied voices. And what better credential for writing about another country, another culture, than to have lived there?
Emma marries Henry Bowman, a Baptist missionary, and they go from Georgia to Yoruba to "save" the people of Yoruba. Emma is certain that she knows exactly how to best assist Henry. The loss of her own child and an unexpected affinity for Jacob, their house helper in Ijaye, intervene. It is she, ultimately, who needs "saving." Jacob says it best, "You speak of God as if you are an only child. Ah!"
Orr manages to inhabit the characters with the unique voice and sensibility required of each character. In so doing she manages to set forth universal truths rarely set down in fiction. One example is as follows: "In Emma flowed the tide of sorrow women feel when husbands tout their power but expose only weakness."
Fellow writers will identify with the importance of Emma's precious writing box, and how it, at one point, becomes the focal point of written conversation between her and Jacob.
And get ready, readers! You will love reading about Emma's emotions of a physical attraction so delicately understated, so sensitive and needy, yet rightly kept in check. Jacob is the catalyst for Emma's own salvation with the rituals of his culture and religion.
More lasting than a fantastic read is the scholarship that undergirds the fiction in this novel. Orr, already well known for her published work as a scholar, has an impressive listing of her research on this topic of missionaries in Africa.
Scholarship, however, is not distracting or heavy as it can be in some fiction set in a past time; on the contrary, it seems as natural as Orr's varied voices. And what better credential for writing about another country, another culture, than to have lived there?
November 5, 2013
"I shall think of this country by day and dream of it by night." After reading this book, I can easily substitute the word "book" in that sentence for "country" since I can't get it out of my mind. Drawing on her own memories of growing up in Nigeria, Orr paints a vivid picture of the land, its people and cultures. I say cultures, plural, because the book includes not only ample details of the African people, but also a sympathetic and fascinating look at the missionary culture from the time period before the Civil War. This aspect of the book was meticulously researched by Orr, who, at the same time, doesn't neglect the story.
Although some of the chapters are from other perspectives, the book remains faithful to the main character throughout. This is Emma's story, about love and not fitting in and yearning to be of service and to make a mark in the world. Her relationships with her family of origin, her husband, the Yoruba people and the elusive Jacob are beautifully detailed with intense and raw emotion. I could feel the heat, the sandstorm and the mysterious "different sun."
With more than just pluck, Emma's journey chronicles a woman coming into her full power and coming face to face with her failings. The losses she endures are keen and yet, with great effort and much soul-searching, she prevails. I love how she derides the practice of eating with one's hands and then revels in the same practice at the end of the book. I wanted her to get to that place and Orr did not let me down. The process by which this happens to Emma was both surprising and perfectly appropriate.
This is a remarkable and finely wrought tale of devotion, struggle and triumph. A truly beautiful book. Thank you, Ms. Orr.
Although some of the chapters are from other perspectives, the book remains faithful to the main character throughout. This is Emma's story, about love and not fitting in and yearning to be of service and to make a mark in the world. Her relationships with her family of origin, her husband, the Yoruba people and the elusive Jacob are beautifully detailed with intense and raw emotion. I could feel the heat, the sandstorm and the mysterious "different sun."
With more than just pluck, Emma's journey chronicles a woman coming into her full power and coming face to face with her failings. The losses she endures are keen and yet, with great effort and much soul-searching, she prevails. I love how she derides the practice of eating with one's hands and then revels in the same practice at the end of the book. I wanted her to get to that place and Orr did not let me down. The process by which this happens to Emma was both surprising and perfectly appropriate.
This is a remarkable and finely wrought tale of devotion, struggle and triumph. A truly beautiful book. Thank you, Ms. Orr.
July 22, 2013
A Different Sun by Elaine Neil Orr seamlessly carries the reader into the life of an American missionary bride during the 1800s. Emma Davis Bowman, the adventurous daughter of a Georgia slave owner, travels with her husband Henry Bowman to Africa, where she struggles to adjust to a rugged, impoverished life of service. Emma faces cultural challenges, learns a new language, fights off tropical diseases, tends to her ill and at times unstable husband, gives birth to children in a foreign land, and grapples with her own isolation and fears.
Orr captures the essence of what it is like to serve God at the expense of one‘s own safety, health, and comfort, presenting characters who are willing to sacrifice everything—their homes, their possessions, their families, their culture, even their children—to spread the gospel in a strange land. The characters are not saintly stereotypes of missionaries: Henry embodies the sometimes manic nature of evangelism, revealing a zeal that is both admirable and selfish. Emma struggles with her own loneliness and questions her faith. For Emma, as well as for the reader, faith is restored through the reconciliation of two continents, bringing a circle of completion and closure to the story. This novel is never “preachy,” and will appeal to both Christians and non-Christians. Orr’s concise, lyrical language keeps the reader engaged from beginning to end.
Orr captures the essence of what it is like to serve God at the expense of one‘s own safety, health, and comfort, presenting characters who are willing to sacrifice everything—their homes, their possessions, their families, their culture, even their children—to spread the gospel in a strange land. The characters are not saintly stereotypes of missionaries: Henry embodies the sometimes manic nature of evangelism, revealing a zeal that is both admirable and selfish. Emma struggles with her own loneliness and questions her faith. For Emma, as well as for the reader, faith is restored through the reconciliation of two continents, bringing a circle of completion and closure to the story. This novel is never “preachy,” and will appeal to both Christians and non-Christians. Orr’s concise, lyrical language keeps the reader engaged from beginning to end.
November 13, 2013
Just as I watched the sun setting over the blue Caribbean Sea, I finished reading “A Different Sun.” It was so perfect a story. I could identify with it on many levels. It brought back vivid memories of arriving in a country I had never seen, and learning to appreciate and love a people so very different in appearance, yet similar in many ways. We lived for 39 years on a small island as missionaries. I came, as Emma did, young and naïve. I too felt rather superior in some ways, and soon ( but, perhaps not soon enough) came to realize I had so much I could learn from the very people I had come to teach. I highlighted so many parts of the book as I read. It was written with words so rich in style, so profound, in so many ways. I have written a memoir taken from my Grandmother Elsie’s diary. Now I wonder how Elaine would have told Elsie’s story. Elsie had some rather cryptic notes in her diary. I was able to discover answers to some of them while doing research. I recently wrote a “tidbit” on my website entitled, “If only walls could talk.” I suppose that is what historical novels do. They allow us to “hear the walls” reveal the stories behind those who lived before our time. I felt Africa; I seemed to hear the walls of Emma’s home’s revealing secrets. Thank you, Elaine for sharing this vivid story.
April 13, 2013
This is the story of a young woman in the mid 1800s who is feeling stifled at home and wants to be able to live with more excitement. She is lucky enough to be sent to college and to have an old slave for a friend but too naïve until then to realize that her father has slaves and these slaves don't have as good a life as she does.
She marries a missionary 20 years older than her and goes off to Nigeria with him. Life in Africa is tough and life being married to an inconsistent older man is difficult. Money is tight; a baby is lost; her husband is often sick out of his head. The African hired help becomes very important to her being.
Here is an author who has some pertinent life experience to what she writes about. She grew up with missionary parents in Nigeria, and left home to go to college and work in the Southern segment of America where one can feel the old slave days often.
Hampering me from 5 stars was a little too much religion but what should I expect from a missionary story?
She marries a missionary 20 years older than her and goes off to Nigeria with him. Life in Africa is tough and life being married to an inconsistent older man is difficult. Money is tight; a baby is lost; her husband is often sick out of his head. The African hired help becomes very important to her being.
Here is an author who has some pertinent life experience to what she writes about. She grew up with missionary parents in Nigeria, and left home to go to college and work in the Southern segment of America where one can feel the old slave days often.
Hampering me from 5 stars was a little too much religion but what should I expect from a missionary story?
February 19, 2013
I just finished reading an advance copy of A Different Sun. Loving books about Africa, I was already really interested in what it was about. A young woman marries a preacher and goes with him to Nigeria, where he has his ministry. It takes place in pre-Civil War era--which is really interesting since at home the woman has slaves and when she gets to Africa, blacks are all free, of course.
The story follows her first two years in Africa with a man that seems, at different times, stubborn, obsessed, malarial, weak, oppressive, and loving. Her character is compelling and rings authentic.
The descriptions are magnificent, and it's difficult to tell this is Orr's first novel. She brings to life the world of 19th century Nigeria in a way that makes me see it, feel it, experience it fully.
I highly recommend this interesting and beautiful book.
The story follows her first two years in Africa with a man that seems, at different times, stubborn, obsessed, malarial, weak, oppressive, and loving. Her character is compelling and rings authentic.
The descriptions are magnificent, and it's difficult to tell this is Orr's first novel. She brings to life the world of 19th century Nigeria in a way that makes me see it, feel it, experience it fully.
I highly recommend this interesting and beautiful book.
June 19, 2013
In A Different Sun, Elaine Neil Orr allows us a vision that is surely spiritual in the richest sense, as we encounter characters driven by an earnest passion to please God, which sounds dull—maybe even delusional—but in Orr’s beautiful telling, theirs is a thrilling journey, wherein we see through a glass less darkly and are favored with unexpected insights about love, duty, loss, hope, work, suffering, race, and God, too. A Different Sun is a singular reading treasure.
June 12, 2013
Just like sweet potato pie, Elaine Neil Orr’s rich wonderful book is a delicious convergence of two powerful cultures: West Africa and the American South. Think missionaries and slaves/slave owners in a pre-Civil War world and get ready for a wonderful tale of love and ambition to unfold.
April 19, 2013
Excellent read: characters jump to life and plot is addicting. Ms. Orr paints a tapestry of interwoven cultures, lives, and continents. Can hardly wait until she writes another!
April 29, 2013
This book really surprised me-in a good way.
June 14, 2013
This book is so evocative of its place and time. I felt I was in Africa along with Emma. I will look for more books by this author.
September 15, 2022
A story of slaves and religion. A woman wanting to make a difference.finding love and a spiritual journey to Africa. Touching at times, disturbing at other times.
October 29, 2013
Emma Davis knows she is called for something special. It's something different from the life her sister Catherine is sure to lead, and different from what her father expects of her. As a young girl growing up on a Middle Georgia plantation, her closest confidant, a slave named Uncle Eli, encourages her to follow her heart. Emma knows to do her life's work she must leave her comfortable life, and she's able to do that when she meets and marries a handsome missionary on leave from his work in Nigeria. Emma and Henry Bowman's married life begins with a journey across the ocean to a Yoruba village.
During her young married life, Emma is constantly out of her comfort zone but leans on her faith to navigate a new culture, household, language and customs. Emma learns the differences between the antebellum South of her girlhood and her womanhood in Africa. Perhaps her biggest challenge is learning to let her husband operate as the head of their household, even when she believes she knows other, better ways to live their missionary life. Through challenges, heartbreak, love and success, Emma learns much about herself as an individual and a wife, and how she can manage to be both.
With beautiful imagery, Orr paints a vivid, complicated picture of Africa and its people, with Africa being a mysterious character in the novel. Orr skillfully creates mounting tension between Emma and Henry, and Emma and Jacob, an native and Henry's missionary helper. And, the author conveys the deep pain and emotional struggle with Emma that she must bear alone. Emma's journey is both an interior and an exterior one, and both are defined by her life as a missionary in a place where she will always be an outsider. Emma's faith, though it waivers at times, sees her through it all.
This is a novel that will give readers reason to consider what freedom is and what one's religion means, timeless ideas that will always resonate with us.
Four out of five stars
If you like A Different Sun, you'll probably like State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and O Pioneers! and My Antonia, both by Willa Cather.
(from http://betsyrm.blogspot.com/2013/07/b...)
During her young married life, Emma is constantly out of her comfort zone but leans on her faith to navigate a new culture, household, language and customs. Emma learns the differences between the antebellum South of her girlhood and her womanhood in Africa. Perhaps her biggest challenge is learning to let her husband operate as the head of their household, even when she believes she knows other, better ways to live their missionary life. Through challenges, heartbreak, love and success, Emma learns much about herself as an individual and a wife, and how she can manage to be both.
With beautiful imagery, Orr paints a vivid, complicated picture of Africa and its people, with Africa being a mysterious character in the novel. Orr skillfully creates mounting tension between Emma and Henry, and Emma and Jacob, an native and Henry's missionary helper. And, the author conveys the deep pain and emotional struggle with Emma that she must bear alone. Emma's journey is both an interior and an exterior one, and both are defined by her life as a missionary in a place where she will always be an outsider. Emma's faith, though it waivers at times, sees her through it all.
This is a novel that will give readers reason to consider what freedom is and what one's religion means, timeless ideas that will always resonate with us.
Four out of five stars
If you like A Different Sun, you'll probably like State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and O Pioneers! and My Antonia, both by Willa Cather.
(from http://betsyrm.blogspot.com/2013/07/b...)
July 2, 2013
A Different Sun tells the story of a young woman’s journey from her Georgia home to Africa with her husband, Baptist missionary Henry Bowen. Yoruba land in Nigeria is their destination; conversion of native Africans to Christianity is their aim. The new marriage is tested as Emma and Henry encounter people who’ve never seen white skin, and who may find such skin unnatural and ugly. The Christian mission is interwoven with a parallel story of Uncle Eli’s carving. He entrusted it to Emma to carry with her to the land of his birth, although he is a slave on Emma’s father’s plantation. The carving’s meaning is mysterious in its rendering as a powerful image of a bird on top of a man’s head.
Emma and Henry grow through their suffering and search for God through their Christian beliefs. Yet, a deeper story unfolds in the recognition of familiar patterns on walls and native cloth. These symbols, like the petals of a dogwood flower, link Emma to a profound theme of wholeness achieved through suffering and integration of shadow and hidden facets of personality. This completeness supplements Christian scriptural motifs with elements of native spirit religions that Christianity seeks to overcome.
The portrayal of the evolution of faith is a vibrant story. Outer circumstances of a journey to a different sun, the ardor of marriage, survival of physical and mental illness, and penetration by confusing realities forced the protagonists to crucial examinations of their beliefs and entrenched, limiting self-concepts. The novel is suitable for adults and young adults alike; its language is vivid but restrained and lyrical. The story is cast in both 18th Century Georgia and Nigeria and as such illuminates the cultures, contrasting them as Emma travels by sea from her birthplace to African locations and makes new homes. I was engaged in the interesting details of both cultures as well with the human drama unfolding through the action of the characters and their journeys.
Emma and Henry grow through their suffering and search for God through their Christian beliefs. Yet, a deeper story unfolds in the recognition of familiar patterns on walls and native cloth. These symbols, like the petals of a dogwood flower, link Emma to a profound theme of wholeness achieved through suffering and integration of shadow and hidden facets of personality. This completeness supplements Christian scriptural motifs with elements of native spirit religions that Christianity seeks to overcome.
The portrayal of the evolution of faith is a vibrant story. Outer circumstances of a journey to a different sun, the ardor of marriage, survival of physical and mental illness, and penetration by confusing realities forced the protagonists to crucial examinations of their beliefs and entrenched, limiting self-concepts. The novel is suitable for adults and young adults alike; its language is vivid but restrained and lyrical. The story is cast in both 18th Century Georgia and Nigeria and as such illuminates the cultures, contrasting them as Emma travels by sea from her birthplace to African locations and makes new homes. I was engaged in the interesting details of both cultures as well with the human drama unfolding through the action of the characters and their journeys.
June 19, 2013
Elaine Neil Orr accomplishes two extremely difficult writing tasks in "A Different Sun". The first is writing a book (mostly) following a woman from the antebellum South who has moments of realization and self-awareness about her family's and her own role in slavery and the treatment of slaves without those realizations becoming maudlin or hackneyed. Orr's second accomplishment concerns faith and religion. Authentically pious and faithful characters are hard to create and maintain, especially in our cynical and less-religious era (well, at least among most readers of literary fiction), but Emma, her husband Henry, and Jacob are all shown in sympathetic and realistic lights. I imagine the racial and religious elements were among the most difficult to traverse, but Orr triumphs.
There are several beautiful sections in the book that aren't necessarily related to the plot. One shows the American and a Yoruban Iyalode discussing the size and scope of Africa by drawing a map on the dirt (you can (and should) read that chapter here: http://southwritlarge.com/articles/re... ) Another section that still resonates with me is a scene involving a hunt for a missing child. This book is not just a meditation on "faith, freedom, and desire," as the book jacket says. It is replete with the situations of life and death that come from leaving what you know and entering and becoming part of a world that is simultaneously hostile and welcoming, deadly and life-giving.
With threads of identity that stretch from Exodus to Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, the ideas of power present in Paul Bowles' "The Sheltering Sky" to Wole Soyinka's "Death and the King's Horseman", and the earnestness of love as seen in Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead", Elaine Neil Orr's "A Different Sun" is a novel of missionary work from 160 years ago that can transform the reader of today.
There are several beautiful sections in the book that aren't necessarily related to the plot. One shows the American and a Yoruban Iyalode discussing the size and scope of Africa by drawing a map on the dirt (you can (and should) read that chapter here: http://southwritlarge.com/articles/re... ) Another section that still resonates with me is a scene involving a hunt for a missing child. This book is not just a meditation on "faith, freedom, and desire," as the book jacket says. It is replete with the situations of life and death that come from leaving what you know and entering and becoming part of a world that is simultaneously hostile and welcoming, deadly and life-giving.
With threads of identity that stretch from Exodus to Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, the ideas of power present in Paul Bowles' "The Sheltering Sky" to Wole Soyinka's "Death and the King's Horseman", and the earnestness of love as seen in Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead", Elaine Neil Orr's "A Different Sun" is a novel of missionary work from 160 years ago that can transform the reader of today.
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