Penguin

388 pages, $16.00

Review by Hannah Rodabaugh

Elaine Neil Orr’s first novel, A Different Sun, is a fascinating portrayal of 19^th century missionaries struggling to create a Baptist church in the Yoruba region of Nigeria.  Orr got her inspiration for the book from the diary of Lurana Davis Bowen, who, along with her husband Thomas Jefferson Bowen, became the first Southern Baptists who worked as missionaries in Africa during the 19^th century.  Orr writes:

“My mother gave me a copy of Lurana’s diary when I was working on my memoir, Gods of Noonday. I was tantalized by its suggested brevity . . . 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 cavalryman and traveled to Yorubaland. What motivated her? What did she long for? What were her limitations?” Continue reading →