Additional information
by Paul Elie (Author)
WINNER OF THE PEN/MARTHA ALBRAND AWARD FOR FIRST NONFICTION
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ATLANTIC AND SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Dorothy Day the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; Flannery O'Connor a "Christ-haunted" literary prodigy in Georgia; and Walker Percy a doctor in Louisiana who had quit medicine in order to write. Although they never met as a group, for three decades they read one another's work, corresponded, and grappled with what Percy called a "predicament shared in common" their
desire to reconcile the claims of faith and art. A friend came up with a name for them--the School of the Holy Ghost.
through memoir and modernist fiction, in soup kitchens and street protests. And it is a story about the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience. With a new afterword by the author, The Life You Save May Be Your Own demonstrates the power of great writing to change--and save--our lives.
Author Biography
Paul Elie, for many years a senior editor with FSG, is now a senior fellow with Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. His first book, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, received the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle award finalist. He lives in New York City.
