Flannery O'Connor: The Woman, the Thinker, the Visionary evaluates O'Connor from the standpoint of one who knew her well and corresponded with her for six years on significant religious and literary matters. More than twenty letters written by O'Connor to Spivey are in her collected letters, and he quotes from these letters and other sources to present a picture of O'Connor as not only a brilliant writer of fiction, but as an intellectual and a student of the great Western tradition in literature and religion.One of the chief points of this book, still neglected by most critics, is O'Connor's deep connection with writers such as Joyce Bernanos, Buber, and Mauriac and how understanding these relationships can help us define her better in the context of the Modernist tradition. O'Connor's close study of these and other religious writers, such as Teilhard de Chardin, led her to bring forth in her fiction competing visions of world apocalypse and of a renewed religious community in the world.