DESCRIPTION

  Brilliant, personable and passionate, Amy Carmichael is arguably the most prolific of all Irish female writers of Christian literature. 

  During the time of the Maharaja in India, she chanced upon a custom whereby children were "married" to the gods and thereafter introduced to a life of temple prostitution. With courage mingled with heartbreak, she began to uncover the facts, sometimes under the guise and pretense of working for the government. After Indian independence, the government courageously prohibited the practice by law. Carmichael and her colleagues provided a safe home for these children against awesomely difficult circumstances at Dohnavur in South India. 

  During her lifetime, she wrote thirty-five books. 

  Amy Carmichael - Christian missionary, social reformer and writer - once described herself as a "wild-bird child and in no wise tame": her life proved her observation to be hauntingly accurate. Millions of people have been influenced by her life and writings. For this biography, the first by anyone from her native homeland, Derick Bingham carefully researched Carmichael's original letters now placed by the Dohnavur Fellowship and Miss Margaret Wilkinson in the Northern Ireland Public Records Office. As Bingham tried to uncover the heart and conscience of this extraordinarily self-effacing legend, he is on the record as saying that it proved to be one of the greatest spiritual experiences of his life. 

  Derek Bingham is a teaching pastor with Christchurch, Belfast. He travels nationally and internationally teaching the Scriptures. This is his eighteenth book. His recent "The Smouldering Flax" has been narrated on 192 radio stations in the United States and has been featured on a recent TV programme across America on "9/11 Remembered." He is a Director on the board of New Irish Arts and lives with his wife Margaret in Belfast. They have three grown children.