Catherine Marshall was born into a pastor’s family in Tennessee and spent most of her youth in the Appalachian region, either in her birth state or West Virginia, where her family moved when she was nine. Her mother, Leonora, volunteered in a mission school before marrying her father, and the outline of Leonora’s story served as the inspiration for Christy. Marshall was thus deeply tied to the culture and religious life of Appalachia and well-positioned to write a book set in that context.

Marshall was already a well-known American writer by the time she released Christy, thanks to the success of the biography she wrote about her husband, Peter Marshall. A Man Called Peter was released in 1951, shortly after her husband’s death. Peter was a prominent pastor in Washington, D.C. and the chaplain of the US Senate, but he suffered numerous health crises during their married life, including a years-long bout of tuberculosis and later a fatal heart attack. Peter died when Catherine was still in her mid-thirties, leaving her as the sole caretaker for their son. The themes of disease, suffering, and loss which interweave the narrative of Christy mirror the patterns of Marshall’s own life.