Because of its Catholic background, some critics compare Gordon's work to the fiction of Graham Greene, J. F. Powers, and Flannery O'Connor. Like Greene and Powers, Gordon portrays priests who struggle with questions of faith and the meaning of the religious vocation. However, for Gordon, these figures are minor characters. She focuses on the lives of women, whose questions the Church does not satisfactorily answer. O'Connor, herself a Catholic, portrayed southern Protestants. Her work (she died in 1964) does not reflect the influence of the women's movement. Gordon, however, is strongly committed to feminist issues.