Carlene Bauer

A “dazzling and gorgeously written” novel of art, faith, and life-changing friendship inspired by the correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell (Ann Packer). In the summer of 1957, two writers are immersed in their craft at an artist’s colony nestled in upstate New York when chance brings them together. …

Raised in evangelical churches that preach apocalypse now, Carlene Bauer grows up happy to oblige the God who presides over her New Jersey girlhood. But in high school and in college, her intellectual and spiritual horizons widen, though still she finds it hard to let go of her ingrained ideals and to rebel as she …