Spirits Eat Ripe Papaya

Philip Andrews arrives on the mission field with outwardly impeccable credentials. He’s a preacher’s kid and a lifelong evangelical Protestant who has been recruited to teach the seventh and eighth grade children of missionaries in the Philippines. What none of the missionaries who welcome him to Ilusan know is that he’s also been expelled from Bible college for his relationship with the daughter of a prominent evangelist. Despite his shoulder-length hair, which causes him to be mistaken for both a woman and Jesus before he’s been at the mission center for twenty-four hours, Philip’s easy-going charm and skill at speaking ＂evangelicalese＂ soon win him a following, especially among the school children. But is Philip a bad seed, a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Or is he an earnest seeker simply trying to find his way? Before this hilarious novel, which one evangelical literary agent said would never be published, reaches its shocking conclusion, every missionary at Ilusan and Philip himself will have to answer that question.

Bill Svelmoe is associate professor of history at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. He grew up in the Philippines where his parents were evangelical Protestant missionaries on Mindanao Island. He is the author of A New Vision for Missions: William Cameron Townsend, the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and the Culture of Early Evangelical Faith Missions, 1896-1945.