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Published in 1951 - Basis for the film of the same name - Front blank page has been removed and an old ownership removed by a scrible over it. >>> Ellen Burton had come to the Congo as a medical missionary, with little knowledge of theology or medicine-armed only with a sense of humor, an uncanny knack for praying with a scalpel in her hand, and a love of people that could not be limited by the color of skin. >>> There's a bit of the appeal of Anna and The King of Siam in this absorbing story of a medical missionary to the Congo; there's an even stronger analogy in Burma Surgeon. It reads as convincingly authentic, -- though this is a novel -- for the author has hewn her story out of an intimate knowledge of the Africa she loves, and the people she came to know, the Bantus, Houses, even the elusive pygmies of the Belgian Congo. The author tells the story of the experiences of an American woman who surmounted many difficulties in order to go as a Baptist missionary to Africa; of her adjustments to the strictures of the poverty-stricken mission where she first went as a nurse; of her taking over a jungle post when the beloved doctor who had established it was invalided out; of her winning the understanding and loyalty and affection of the natives. There's adventure here and a very human picture of the African mission field -- wholesome contrast to the rather slighting dismissal only too often met in reporters' stories of missionaries. At one time a missionary herself in the Near East, Miss Stinetorf knows whereof she writes -- and the vacations in Africa over many years filled in her dramatic and colorful background. This is a book that it will be fun to recommend to that rather difficult but insatiable group of readers who want fiction of the might-be-true type, exotic background, a good story, and a wholesome one.