“Abby, are you glad to be in the States?”

She snapped out of it. “It’s good to visit. But Papua New Guinea is my home.”

“Of course. I understand you’re staying with your cousin, Congresswoman Lauren Caldwell of Texas.”

“Right now I’m at the Omni Hotel. In Washington I’m staying with Lauren.”

Marshall smiled at the camera. “And how was your train trip to New York? What’s it like seeing things you’ve only heard about before?”

“It was fascinating. I can’t believe how many animals you have in the countryside. My tribe would be amazed. The horses and cows—they’re bigger than I expected.”

“You’d never seen a horse or a cow?”

“No…we don’t have those in the jungle.”

This had started as the worst interview I’d ever seen. How educated was this woman?

“So your parents, Sam and Emily, were missionaries of the Christian religion to the Inisi tribe, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you were born in the jungle?”

“Yes.”

“But you are the only surviving family member?”

Abby pressed her lips together before speaking. “I’m the only one, yes. My father and my brother, William, died from a virulent strain of malaria when I was nineteen. My mother died eight years ago.”

Virulent. The uneducated didn’t use the word virulent.

Marshall’s expression transitioned from supportive friend to “serious” journalist. Do these people practice their expressions?

“Did your parents ever consider that their presence and the religion they brought would irrevocably change the Inisi?”

I imagined the guest was too naive to realize the question was a setup.

“There was no guarantee that my parents’ mission would succeed. But they worked and prayed hard, and God honored their prayers.”

Marshall smiled condescendingly. “Let me rephrase the question. Did it bother your parents that what they were doing might destroy the Inisi’s natural way of life?”

Abby stared at her for a moment. “Oh. I see what you’re asking. Did my parents hope that by being there they would teach the Inisi to change some of their ways? Yes, of course.”

“And they decided that the Christian religion was the way to do that.”

“They knew that only Jesus could set these people free.”

“How would you characterize your family’s attitude toward the Inisi? Since you came preaching Christianity, was it hard not to be disdainful of them?”

Abby looked surprised. “Disdainful? No, not at all. We grew to love the Inisi. I adopted an Inisi girl as my own daughter. My parents’ goal was to preserve their culture by teaching them Jesus’s way of love and forgiveness instead of hatred and war.”

“Didn’t the Inisi have their own religion?”

“You mean did they have a connection with the spirit world? Yes, their whole lives were dominated by the spirit world. They lived in constant fear of the spirits, whom the village shaman would try to appease in various ways.”