James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, Sinclair Lewis, Barbara Kingsolver, James Michener, and John Grisham are among the well known writers who made American missionary evangelicalism a
central subject in at least one novel, says Tricomi (English, State U. of New York-Binghampton U.). He argues that the American missionary novel is future oriented because, almost by necessity,
it articulates a historically situated vision of an evangelizing America, whether it celebrates or critiques that vision. His topics include remaking the myth of a chosen people in Catharine
Sedtwick's Hope Leslie, missionary reform in Alice Hobart's Yang and Yin and missionary rebuke in Claude McKay's Banana Bottom, and the reluctant embrace of American missionary imperialism in
James Michener's Hawaii. Annotation 穢2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
