Conflict and struggle in the frontier regions of North America is a theme in many novels. Christy shares the Western genre's tendency to focus on the conditions of lawlessness and rugged individualism that characterized American pioneer society. Ole Edvart R61vaag's Giants in the Earth (1927) and the novels of Willa Cather have analyzed the conditions of life in regions which are isolated and largely free of the trappings of civilized life.

Christy also contains several elements which are traditional in the genre of the romance novel. It is the story of a young girl, living an adventurous and rather unprotected life in a setting which is exotic compared to the place of her upbringing. As in many romance novels, the heroine finds the man to whom she is drawn hard to understand. Dramatic tension is introduced when she finds herself forced to decide between the man...