Province of Joy, The: Praying with Flannery O'Connor

The Province of Joy is a book of hours rooted in the rich theological imagination of fiction writer, Flannery O'Connor. A lifelong Catholic devoted to liturgical prayer, O'Connor was also an avid reader and thinker who lived a rich spiritual life. Cutting a broad swath through spiritual and theological texts of every stamp, O'Connor engaged ideas about the nature of prayer and its many forms on a daily basis and often shared them in her correspondence, essays, and stories. This book brings together O'Connor's practice of prayer and the rich spiritual context within which O'Connor lived and out of which she wrote.

O'Donnell organizes this devotional around six themes:

* The False Self and the True Self
* Blindness & Vision
* Limitation & Grace
* The Mystery of the Incarnation
* Revelations & Resurrections
* The Christian Comedy.

In addition, she presents brief reflections suggesting links between the themes, readings, and prayers of the day with O'Connor's fiction. These parallels illustrate of some of the ways in which O'Connor's practice of her faith and her art intersect and serve to illuminate one another.