“What a delight that there’s a new Flannery O’Connor manuscript in the world, courtesy of Jessica Hooten Wilson, who has performed a true labor of love here, for which the literary world will be wildly grateful.”—George Saunders, New York Times bestselling author of Man Booker Prize winner Lincoln in the Bardo

“Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage? is an important read for followers of this influential writer who died at age thirty-nine. Rather than complete O’Connor’s unfinished novel, Why Do the Heathen Rage?, Hooten Wilson pairs passages from the book with insightful commentary about O’Connor the person and the artist. One of America’s best-known Catholic writers, O’Connor has long been an inspiration to Christian writer Hooten Wilson, but the book doesn’t gloss over the late author’s anti-Black racism. For fans interested in a complex portrait of O’Connor and the novel she never completed, this work is required reading.”—Nadra Nittle, author of bell hooks’ Spiritual Vision and Toni Morrison’s Spiritual Vision

“Hooten Wilson has achieved a miracle with Flannery O’Connor’s unfinished novel, Why Do the Heathen Rage?, resurrecting the fragmented bones of this freakish Lazarus text and making it walk about on the page to the amazement of the literary world. Why has nobody attempted this before? I suppose because nobody’s been brave enough until now. Hooten Wilson is not afraid. In that way, she’s much like Flannery herself, a Southern writer with as much heart as brain. I stand in awe. Heathens all over will be raging to read this resurrected gift of a book. Maybe some Christians will too. Miracles do happen.”—Harrison Scott Key, author of How to Stay Married and The World’s Largest Man

“Encountering Flannery O’Connor’s words felt as if I were being transported in time before my birth while understanding clearly that the conditions that bore O’Connor, and her writing, offer an even clearer picture of who we were, who we are, who we are becoming, and dare I say, who we are constructed or imagined to be.”—Steve A. Prince (from the afterword)