Donnie and Jean was a time of great transition for our nation, one in which there was no television, and radio and Hollywood were the main sources of both entertainment and news defining what would later be called "The Great Generation." Comic books and the funny papers were war oriented and children were ready to defend America against all invaders; while adults fought the war, children played at war. Donnie and Jean is more than a story of two twelve year old children meeting and beginning to learn what it is to love; they were born into a generation that epitomized the best of what America was during that era when the leaders of America were trusted, when teachers and police were the friends of children. In many ways it was an age of innocence lost and not to be recovered, but recalled here in the story of these two children.

Cristi is left an unexpected legacy by her late grandfather. She has had no contact with her mother's family since leaving Brazil as a child; they are strangers who have remained silent, hostile and inaccessible. In the light of this, coming into a startling sum of money as well as a cattle ranch is not only confusing, but merits a visit to Brazil. This means leaving her beloved Drumveyn and Dougal. And when Dougal learns that Cristi is an heiress he feels that the gulf between them has become far too wide to cross. During her Brazilian interlude, Cristi is very attracted to her handsome cousin, Luis, until she discovers he's only after her money. So she returns to Drumveyn to persuade Dougal that they have a future together. The seventh book in a series of novels set in Perthshire.

The novel is set in 1967 and 1968, first in Mobile, Alabama and then at Indiana University in Bloomington. However, the story is in no way a 1960s political novel. Vietnam barely gets mentioned. The themes are infidelity, sibling rivalry, deception, self-deception, separation, and miscommunication. The two main characters are Elizabeth Nye, a 20-year-old German major, and Brian Petersen, the 27-year-old history teaching assistant with whom she has a five-week affair while she's temporarily separated from her liberal-minded fiancé, Alan Abrams. Elizabeth is dishonest and selfish while Brian is naive and idealistic, but virtually no one in this story is either all good or all bad. That's what makes them people rather than stereotypes. Minor and cameo characters include Elizabeth's self-indulgent academic father, her sexy younger sister, a not-so-merry widowed neighbor, Brian's excessively beloved older sister, his pined-after lost love, that woman's life-hardened lesbian roommate, and a gay friend of Elizabeth's. The narrative technique involves the use of several different points of view. A given scene may allow the reader to see the same action from starkly contrasting points of view. This reinforces the overarching theme of the book, which is the unending difficulty of human communication.

Small towns are big mission fields that are almost totally neglectedby modern churches. City ministry has become, for many,the definition of godly ministry. This is a call to take the gospeleverywhere, big or small, because that is what Jesus told us to do. Donnie Griggs uncovers the biblical teaching that helps churches get in line with Jesus' mission to reach all people.