Flannery O'Connor is considered one of the great Southern American writers, although during her short lifetime she only published two novels and one collection of short stories. The specter of death haunted both her life and her stories.
Born Mary Flannery O'Connor on March 25, 1925, she was the only child of Irish American parents who practiced Roman Catholism. The family lived in Savannah, Georgia for the first thirteen years of O'Connor's life. Savannah was considered a sophisticated, lively city, and had a strong Irish Catholic population. It wasn't until the family moved to Midgeville, a provincial town where they could have a farm, that O'Connor began to feel like an...