Flannery O'Connor

'This is a masterful study of O'Connor, especially of seemingly contradictory, even paradoxical elements in her best fiction. Particularly valuable in this study are the revealed tensions and interrelationships of O'Connor's 'secular intellect' versus her 'religious intellect'--those contrary viewpoints that resonate constantly in her best stories and emphatically in The Violent Bear It Away.'--Joseph K. Davis, Professor of American Literature, University of Memphis