I've just read this book for the second time, after 12 years. I re-read it because I thought it raised some interesting missiological issues, and I've been asked to write an article on missiology in fiction.

It has a couple of American Protestant missionaries trying to evangelise an Indian tribe in South America, reoccupying a station that had been abandoned by Roman Catholic missionaries after one of them had been killed. Of the Protestant missionaries, one is culturally sensitive, while the other, his more-experienced superior, is not. There are also a couple of American mercenaries, and a local administrator who hopes to use them to subdue the Indians by force.

It is well-written,and though the characters seem in some ways to be caricatures, representative types rather than real people, the dilemmas they face, and the way they face them are real.

On my blog I've written a somewhat expanded review, including the film as well At play in the fields of the Lord