Misfit, The

Set against the tumultuous backdrop of contemporary China, Larry Lewis's autobiographical The Misfit tells a moving story of how God breaks through the aridity of human hearts, and how healing occurs in the midst of the everyday. Father Lewis, a Maryknoll missioner, was estranged from himself, his church, and his Maryknoll colleagues when he accepted an assignment to teach English to Chinese students in the interior Chinese city of Wuhan. It was a year before the now-infamous massacre in Tiananmen Square. The Misfit tells how the young Chinese Lewis taught saved him from his alienation and revealed that an important dimension in the growth of all human beings lies in accepting their "misfitness" for the unidimensional life that contemporary culture seeks to impose. With the political turmoil of 1980s China always in the background, Lewis and his Chinese students discover eternal truths through the American literature they study and the growing bonds of friendship they share. Reading John Gardner's "Redemption", Emily Dickinson's poetry, and Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find", Lewis and his students discover that they live in "a world without a roof", and the missioner finds himself rescued from estrangement by the humanity all around him.