One of the quirkiest and most intriguing of all the Pivotal Players was a twentieth-century Catholic writer of fiction from the American South, a woman whose macabre, puzzling, and luminous stories have had a transformative impact on both the Church and the wider culture. Flannery O’Connor had the courage to show just how dark are the hearts of fallen human beings in her fiction. But at the same time, she had the incomparable grace to demonstrate how God continues to work even on that bleak and blasted ground.