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The man of the desert

by Grace Livingston Hill

Hazel Radcliffe was born into the elite society of New York, a veritable treasure trove of privilege, replete with creature comforts and teeming with opportunities of all kinds. When she accompanies her family on a business trip to Arizona, her path happens to cross that of a missionary, John Brownleigh, who lives in a shanty on the great plain in the most modest of conditions. John wants desperately to be with Hazel, but vetoes the idea outright due to her apparent lack of "fitness" for the kind of circumstances in which he lives. He presumes that she would be either unwilling or unable to give up her special comforts and contacts to join his unique lifestyle. He is so certain of the accuracy of his assessment that he does not even learn her name, rendering himself incapable of looking her up in the future. Hazel wants equally to be with John, and takes offense at his underestimation of her. Even though she is surrounded by four hundred select New York friends with an ongoing schedule of parties, dances, gatherings, social events, and gaiety, she comes to see their amusements and festivity as somehow not truly satisfying. In contrast to her missionary who is out attempting to educate people who live much more simple lives, helping them and doing good things for them, her "society" friends seem to be enmeshed in daily frivolity, which after a time begins to feel somewhat empty. So Hazel painstakingly takes up the challenge of learning to cook all sorts of things, actually quite an astounding feat since up to this point she has done virtually nothing like this herself. She adds to this the goal of becoming a registered nurse, an even more daunting task. While John is in a physical desert, Hazel begins in a cultural "desert" of sorts. Thankfully this is not a psychological, emotional, or spiritual desert as well. For Hazel is replete with inner riches, the kind which enable her to see the total goodness of John, appreciate it, be touched by it, make herself worthy of it, and finally to find a way to cross paths with it again. John is stunned with joy to be apprised of his mistake, and to have Hazel join him in a life more close to nature and to what is good and real in people, a shared life experience with an ongoing beauty and wealth of its own.