He s a broken vessel, to be sure, but through him flows divine love, antidote to the revolution s monstrously misguided humanism. Flannery O Connor, Wise Blood. Even today, O Connor s native Georgia remains, for Rome, missionary turf. Hazel Motes, prickly star of this 1952 tragicomedy, may be the misfit who haunts us longest. Such a shocking finish befits a yarn whose cast includes racketeering preachers, a mummy, and a rascal in a gorilla suit.
Faith is a matter of life and death.
Jose Maria Gironella, The Cypresses Believe in God. The first of five books about Spain s conflict, this thousand-page epic recalls Pasternak s Doctor Zhivago, that other 20th century masterwork that renders the pathos of tradition besieged. As it surges toward the outbreak of fighting, it tells the tragedy of a priest felled by a firing squad while mobs torch churches, and of his brother, anguished over the abuses of the old order of Church and State, but terrified of anarchy s approach. Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest. Neglected nowadays even by his compatriots, Bernanos deserves a revival, if only for this uncommonly lovely 1937 gem.