The Little Minister
In the windswept Scottish village of Thrums, a young minister arrives with more faith than funds and more ambition than experience. Gavin Dishart is determined to shepherd his flock of weavers through troubled times, but nothing prepares him for the chaos that ensues when wages are cut and the looms fall silent. Riots simmer in the cobblestone streets while Gavin's theological certainties begin to crack under the weight of actual suffering. Then there's Babbie. Mysterious, magnetic, and utterly indifferent to the respectability that defines ministerial life, she blows through Thrums like a force of nature. Her presence fractures Gavin's world, forcing him to choose between the doctrine he's sworn to uphold and the radical, inconvenient demands of love and compassion. Barrie, better known for Peter Pan, crafts something unexpected here: a novel that is at once a tender romance, a social document of industrial-age hardship, and a meditation on what it truly means to preach the gospel when the gospel might demand everything you have.
