May Lindsay and her young stepsister Maggie are left penniless and homeless when their father the local doctor dies. Maggie can go to live with her three maiden aunts, but May at the age of nineteen is faced with a choice. Should she take the position of companion to a girl she doesn’t know, who lives some distance away, or accept a proposal of marriage from the man who has been her friend since they were small children? May Lindsay makes her decision, but it is not long before she wonders if she has done the right thing. This is a story of life in Victorian England as May, who has led a sheltered life, is pushed out into a much bigger world than she has previously known. She soon encounters titled families, and is taken on a tour of the Holy Land which occupies much of the story. Two men seem to be a big disappointment to May Lindsay. Will her Christian faith hold strong in these troubles? Was she right in the decision she made before leaving home? Abridged by Chris Wright. Chris is the author of over thirty books, starting with young fiction for an English Christian publisher in 1966. He has written both fiction and non-fiction, mostly with a Christian theme, for a variety of publishers. Chris is married with three grownup children, and lives in the West Country of England where he is a home group leader with his local church.
Amy Catherine Walton, better known as Mrs O.F. Walton, was a British author of Christian children's and teenage books, mainly but not exclusively fiction. She was born Amy Catherine Deck in 1849, and died in Leigh, Kent in 1939.
Amy was the daughter of the vicar of St Stephen's Church, Spring Street, Hull.
Her career as an author began with My Mates And I, written in 1870 but not published until 1873. Her first published work was My Little Corner in 1872. In 1874 came one of her most famous books, Christie's Old Organ, which has been regularly reprinted up to the present day. It is the story of orphaned Christie and his friend, the aged organ-grinder Treffy. It was introduced to Japan in 1882 and was published in 1885 by the translation of Tajima Kashi. It was one of the earliest books in history of both Christian's and children's literature of Japan and was re-translated in 1903 and 1994.
In 1875 she married Octavius Frank Walton, who was her father's curate at the time. It was under her husband's name, as Mrs O. F. Walton, that she was to become better known. In the year of their marriage they moved to Jerusalem where Octavius took up a ministry in a church on Mount Zion until 1879. While there in 1877, her book A Peep Behind The Scenes was published. It is the story of Rosalie, a child who works in a travelling theatre.
The Waltons lived at Cally, Kirkcudbrightshire for a while, and from 1883 to 1893, Octavius was in the ministry at the church of St Thomas, York, moving to St Jude's, Wolverhampton in 1893. He retired in 1918.
Although she wrote many more books, it is A Peep Behind the Scenes and Christie's Old Organ that have remained well known, continuing to be published by the Lutterworth Press, successor to her original publisher, the Religious Tract Society.
I read another book by Mrs. O F Walton and knew I wanted to read more! This is a great Christian story with so many great scenes about salvation and the way to heaven!