O’Connor’s endeavor to write engaging narratives,at the same time open up to the divine in the everyday world
 
“The ‘narrative secret’ of Johansen’s title refers to the strategies that she sees O’Connor using in her effort to communicate a spiritual message to a doubting audience. O’Connor knew from the beginning of her career that writing about the thing that mattered most to her—a person’s relationship in faith with Jesus—and being taken seriously as a writer meant [choosing] a dramatic and difficult way to get her vision across: to write stories that work first and foremost as engaging narratives and at the same time open up to the divine in the everyday world.
 

Ruthann Knechel Johansen is President of Bethany Theological Seminary and the author of Listening in the Silence, Seeing in the Dark: Reconstructing Life after Brain Injury.
 

“I recommend the book to readers interested in the trickster, and those who know and love O’Connor's fiction enough to relish new insights. . . . Johansen has earned her place in the ranks of those who continue to delight in O'Connor’s fiction, to delight in attempts to explain its power over us, and to take pleasure in the certainty that her fiction will continue to elude our explanations.”
—Text and Performance Quarterly
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O’Connor’s endeavor to write engaging narratives,at the same time open up to the divine in the everyday world
 
“The ‘narrative secret’ of Johansen’s title refers to the strategies that she sees O’Connor using in her effort to communicate a spiritual message to a doubting audience. O’Connor knew from the beginning of her career that writing about the thing that mattered most to her—a person’s relationship in faith with Jesus—and being taken seriously as a writer meant [choosing] a dramatic and difficult way to get her vision across: to write stories that work first and foremost as engaging narratives and at the same time open up to the divine in the everyday world.
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