physician's late wife was Miss Alice's daughter (conceived when a predatory visiting minister raped Alice as a young woman). She learns that the physician's agnosticism was partly a reaction to the apparent injustice of his wife's death. Christy's faith is tried by these and other revelations, at the same time that she is romantically drawn both to the minister and the physician. Allusions to history, geography, and science The fictional village of Cutter Gap is based on a community centered on the Chapel Hollow in the small Morgan Branch valley (NOT to be confused with Morgan Branch), a few miles west of Del Rio in Cocke County, Tennessee.<ref name="events">"One Week Out: Events coming next weekend," The Daily Times (Maryville, TN), June 13, 2008, Weekend section: "Although Cutter Gap does not exist, it is widely believed that Marshall based the village on the real community of Morgan Branch in nearby Cocke County. Townsend served as Cutter Gap for the popular CBS television series Christy in the mid-1990s."</ref> Local landmarks associated with the story are marked for visitors, including the site of the Ebenezer Mission in Chapel Hollow. At a women's society meeting where Christy was giving a talk regarding the plight of those living in Cutter Gap, a woman shares with her information regarding the Danish folk schools established by Grundtvig, in which adults learned to use traditional folkways and crafts to become self-sustaining. A wholly fictional MacNeill performs trepanation on an accident victim and studies trachoma in the local population. Several characters suffer from typhoid fever. The physician and others work to teach better hygiene to the local population to prevent the disease. MacNeill lectures Christy on the origins of moonshining and the reasons why many locals — including MacNeill — consider its prohibition to be an unfair block to their earning money from their crops. Christy eventually marries the physician. Catherine Marshall, the widow of Dr. Peter Marshall when she wrote the book, has been quoted as saying the book was about 75% historical. The main characters (the physician) and mountain woman descended from ancient royalty, are fictionalized. Catherine Marshall's mother, the model for Christy, married a minister. A detailed comparison between aspects of the novel and the history is detailed in the essay Christy and Leonora: City Girl, Country Gal. Film, TV, or theatrical adaptationsChristy was adapted as a TV movie and television series in 1994. The week