The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage Book

The story of four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for GodIn the midâ??twentieth century four American Catholics came to believe that the best way to explore the questions of religious faith was to write about themâ??in works that readers of all kinds could admire. The Life You Save May Be Your Own is their storyâ??a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us.Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Dorothy Day the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; Flannery Oâ??Connor a â??Christ-hauntedâ? literary prodigy in Georgia; Walker Percy a doctor in New Orleans who quit medicine to write fiction and philosophy. A friend came up with a name for themâ??the School of the Holy Ghostâ??and for three decades they exchanged letters, ardently read one anotherâ??s books, and grappled with what one of them called a â??predicament shared in common.â?A pilgrimage is a journey taken in light of a story; and in The Life You Save May Be Your Own Paul Elie tells these writersâ?? story as a pilgrimage from the God-obsessed literary past of Dante and Dostoevsky out into the thrilling chaos of postwar American life. It is a story of how the Catholic faith, in their vision of things, took on forms the faithful could not have anticipated. And it is a story about the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience, about the power of literature to changeâ??to saveâ??our lives.Read More