A thinly veiled autobiographical account of one woman's austere life in the north Georgia mountains, A Circuit Rider's Wife draws on the years Corra Harris accompanied her husband in his work as a Methodist missionary. Set mostly in the fictional Redwine circuit, the novel tells of the challenges, hardships, and--aside from the occasional homemade or homegrown donations--mostly intangible rewards of itinerant country preaching. Through the eyes of Elizabeth Thompson, the circuit rider's wife and narrator, Harris offers a witty but caring assessment of the sometimes fine differences between spiritual and merely religious folks, town and country society, backsliders and straight-and-narrow plodders, Methodists and Baptists, and heaven and hell.