Flannery O'Connor has been studied and lauded under many labels. She was the Southern author whose pen captured the soul of a proud region struggling to emerge out of racism and poverty, the female writer whose independent spirit and tragically short life inspired a generation of women, the Catholic artist whose fiction evokes themes of sin and damnation, mercy and redemption.

Now, and for the first time, The Abbess of Andalusia affords us an in-depth look at Flannery O'Connor the believer.

In these pages you will come to know Flannery O'Connor not only as a writer and an icon, but as a theologian and apologist; as a spiritual director and a student of prayer; as a suffering soul who learned obedience and merited grace through infirmity; and, truly, as the abbess of her own small, but significant, spiritual house. For decades Flannery O'Connor the author has touched her readers with the brilliance of her books. Now be edified and inspired by the example of her life.