New York, NY: Macmillan (2007)

As new in paperback.

A brilliant, innovative novel, acutely alert to where the sacred lives—and where it does not

First published in 1960, The Violent Bear It Away is a landmark in American literature—a dark and absorbing example of the Gothic sensibility and bracing satirical voice that are united in Flannery O'Connor's work. In this, O'Connor's second novel, the orphaned Francis Marion Tarwater and his cousin, the schoolteacher Rayber, defy the prophecy of their dead uncle that Tarwater will become a prophet and baptize Rayber's young son, Bishop. A series of struggles ensues as Tarwater fights an internal battle against his faith and the voices calling him to God, while Rayber tries to draw him into a more "reasonable" modern world. Both wrestle with the legacy of their dead relative and lay claim to Bishop's soul. All this is observed by O'Connor with an astonishing combination of irony and compassion, humor and pathos.

Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1925. A devout Catholic, she lived most of her life on a farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she raised peacocks and wrote. She was the author of two novels, thirty-one short stories, and numerous essays and reviews. When she died at the age of thirty-nine, America lost one of its most gifted writers at the height of her powers.