Flannery O'Connor's parents had an effect on their only daughter in ways that were both fruitful and tragic. O'Connor was born in 1925 to a prominent Georgia family of devout Roman Catholics—an anomaly in the largely Protestant South. This intensely religious milieu played a major role in O'Connor's evolution as a writer. She attended schools in Savannah and Milledgeville and confronted tragedy at age fifteen when her father died of lupus, a degenerative disease which attacks the body's vital organs. O'Connor later entered Geor gia State College for Women (now Georgia College), majored in social sciences, and spent her spare time writing and drawing for student publications. She began writing and publishing short fiction in earnest when she entered the graduate writing program at Iowa State University, which she completed in 1947.

O'Connor started work on her first novel, Wise Blood, while living at a writer's...