{"product_id":"9781429923958","title":"The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe story of four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for God\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the mid-twentieth century four American Catholics came to believe that the best way to explore the questions of religious faith was to write about them-in works that readers of all kinds could admire. \u003ci\u003eThe Life You Save May Be Your Own\u003c\/i\u003e is their story-a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThomas Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Dorothy Day the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; Flannery O'Connor a \"Christ-haunted\" literary prodigy in Georgia; Walker Percy a doctor in New Orleans who quit medicine to write fiction and philosophy. A friend came up with a name for them-the School of the Holy Ghost-and for three decades they exchanged letters, ardently read one another's books, and grappled with what one of them called a \"predicament shared in common.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA pilgrimage is a journey taken in light of a story; and in \u003ci\u003eThe Life You Save May Be Your Own\u003c\/i\u003e Paul Elie tells these writers' story as a pilgrimage from the God-obsessed literary past of Dante and Dostoevsky out into the thrilling chaos of postwar American life. It is a story of how the Catholic faith, in their vision of things, took on forms the faithful could not have anticipated. And it is a story about the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience, about the power of literature to change-to save-our lives.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47153863786736,"sku":"9781429923958","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781429923958_p0.jpg?v=1769901057","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781429923958","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}