100 books like The Small Woman

Set in Holland during WWII, this autobiography gives an up close and personal look at life in a German concentration camp.

The vivid descriptions of the horrid living conditions and prevailing illnesses made me feel like I was there. Most memorable was the discussion of the flea-infested straw bedding and the notion of being thankful for the fleas. The author and her sister were devout Christians, but why be thankful for fleas? However, the guards left the women alone because of the fleas.

I will also always remember how the author was given a small bottle of liquid vitamin D and how she never hesitated to share it with the sick, yet it never ran dry. She makes it clear this was God’s work. 

This is the best missionary autobiography I have ever read.

In These Strange Ashes Elisabeth Elliot is so brutally honest about being a missionary. She complains about humidity and wrinkled clothes. She endures loneliness and times of deep discouragement in the jungles of Ecuador. And the ending! I won’t spoil it.

While I’ve read other books by Elliot, including her famous memoir about losing her husband Jim, this one stayed with me. It asks, why do we serve God? What happens when the result is not stellar? Does it mean we failed? I wasn’t eager to sign up for a trip to the jungle after reading her story, but it helped me see my life from a new perspective.

Joni Eareckson’s life seemed over forever when she dove into a lake and suffered a traumatic head injury, but God used her tragedy for His glory.

I first saw Joni’s story at the movie theatres in 7th grade, and since then she has become a personal hero as I saw her overcome trauma and live bravely for God. Joni was at the peak of her life—strong, attractive, athletic—when a diving accident changed everything. In the days and weeks following the accident, unable to move, Joni sank into deep depression and bitterness.

God helped Joni find new ways to live, love, and serve Him. She is one of my personal heroes, helping others with physical disability find hope and purpose in God.

In the late 1800s, at age 28, Amy Carmichael went to India as a missionary, compelled to stay by the children she adopted as her own.

I love that Amy was stubbornly unconventional. Unlike other missionaries of her time, she adopted the cultural dress of saris and sandals, and lived among the people she served. She stood up against local practice to rescue children and though she had no children of her own became a mother to many.

Amy was so captivated by her love for India its people that she stayed there for 55 years, writing 35 books. There is something raw and honest about Amy’s story that gave me a passion for missions.

I know I said in my introduction that there are too many books from the missionary perspective and not enough from a Chinese point of view, but I’m going to make an exception here with the only novel, too, in the group. In this 1985 title, the extraordinary John Hersey captures the urge of American missionaries to proselytize in China, as well as their complicated relationship with Chinese Christians. This sweeping fictional biography of David Treadup, whose character is a composite of the lives of actual missionaries, including Hersey’s father, carries the reader from New York state in the early 1900s to the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s.  

The original chronicle of the massive pirate outbreak along the China coast in the early 19th century. Written by a Chinese amateur historian, he makes his patriotic agenda clear on every page: to boost the maligned reputation of China’s imperial navy in allegedly quashing the pirates (by twisting the historical truth, to put it mildly). The main characters and incidents are based on fact, while he fills in the gaps with private conversations and meetings that no one could have been privy to. Translated into English by a German missionary in 1835, this mix of fact and speculation is the ur-document on which every western account of these pirates is based. Newer editions include an eyewitness narrative by a British sailor who spent six months as a captive of the pirates. Essential and entertaining reading which should be taken with large pinches of (pilfered) salt.

Pearl S. Bucks was the first American woman who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was brought to China by her missionary parents when she was an infant. She continued to spend much of the first half of her life in China from 1892 to 1934. This autobiography covers her growing up in China and returning to the U.S. Good-hearted and open-minded, she was the very few foreigners who had intimate access to ordinary Chinese people's lives and souls, which remain mysterious to most outsiders to this day. As a sharp-eyed observer and skillful writer, she gave an extraordinary account of the major events such as the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, the Boxer Rebellion, and the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. The missionary work brought her to China in the first place, but in the end, she admitted failure in bringing God to China. Pearl… show more.

You probably know Eric Liddell’s story from the film Chariots of Fire—or, at least the first part of his story, leading up to his triumph in the 1924 Olympics in Paris. In many ways, however, Liddell’s following twenty years—mostly spent as a missionary in China—were even more impressive. Hamilton’s book takes Liddell’s story through those two decades and into his final, and fatal, five years of quiet, stoic heroism and leadership in a Japanese internment camp.

After the death of our daughter, shortly after birth, I felt abandoned by God and lost all desire to serve in any form of ministry. This book, above all others that I have read, helped me personally and spiritually to not only move on with my life, face new and challenging adversities, but to return to ministry; a ministry that has drawn in thousands from across the U.S. and from twenty-five foreign countries for a week of intensive counseling.

Pearl Buck is an author whom I admire for her genuine love and respect of the Chinese culture and people. This sentiment shines through her novels. Pavilion of Women is unique in that it highlights a pronounced social change in China in the early 20th century, when Western values began to nudge younger Chinese to unyoke themselves of old traditions and customs. The fastidious, all-wise, and freedom-seeking protagonist attempts to dictate other people’s lives to keep her household in order, but fails miserably. She finally learns from a renegade missionary that her rigid attitudes and lack of empathy are in fact the real shackles that hobble her.

I love this novel because character development is superbly handled.