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A family’s road trip, a Bible salesman’s visit, and a stranger’s arrival become encounters with vanity, violence, and unexpected revelation. These ten stories bring O’Connor’s sharp ear and dark humor to the rural and small-town South, where certainty rarely survives contact with another person.

In nine stories, ordinary encounters expose the tensions running through families and communities in the changing South. A bus ride, a college graduate’s homecoming, and a farm widow’s waiting room become occasions for pride, conflict, and revelation. Published after O’Connor’s death, this collection brings together some of her most incisive fiction.

Raised by a self-appointed prophet in rural Tennessee, Francis Marion Tarwater tries to resist the religious calling imposed on him. After his great-uncle’s death, he moves between a schoolteacher’s rational world and the fierce demands of belief. O’Connor’s second novel follows a struggle over freedom, responsibility, and grace through dark humor and startling violence.

Hazel Motes arrives in a Southern city determined to escape the faith that shaped him. His Church Without Christ draws him into a world of street preachers, false prophets, and desperate believers. Flannery O’Connor’s first novel brings dark comedy and unsettling violence to questions of belief, freedom, and grace.