Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Acknowledgments vi
3. Note vi
4. Contents vii
5. Preface ix
6. Preface to the Second Edition xiii
7. Postscript: A Personal Note xvii
8. Introduction 1
9. The Search for Redemption: Flannery O'Connor's Fiction 32
10. Flannery O'Connor and the Bible Belt 49
11. Her Rue with a Difference: Flannery O'Connor and the Southern Literary Tradition 73
12. The Novelist as Prophet 88
13. Flannery O'Connor and the Grotesque 108
14. An American Girl 123
15. Flannery O'Connor's Testimony: The Pressure of Glory 138
16. Flannery O'Connor, a Realist of Distances 157
17. Flannery O'Connor's Clarity of Vision 184
18. Flannery O'Connor's Sacred Objects 196
19. "The Perplex Business": Flannery O'Connor and Her Critics Enter the 1970s 207
20. Bibliography 235
21. Index 257