The Lame Shall Enter First: Short Story

By Flannery O'Connor

At his wit’s end with his son’s grief over the death of his mother a year earlier, Sheppard invites a troubled youth, Rufus, into their home. Contemptuous of Sheppard, Rufus resists the man’s attempts to improve him, but the extent—and consequences—of Rufus’s disdain for Sheppard become clear only in Rufus’s dealings with Sheppard’s son, Norton.

American author Flannery O’Connor is known for her portrayal of flawed characters and their inevitable spiritual transformation. “The Lame Shall Enter First” is a haunting story of a flawed man unable to connect with and comfort his grieving son.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jan 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781443440325

Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O’Connor was an American novelist and short-story writer, who over the course of her short career produced two novels and more than thirty short stories, including the critically acclaimed Wise Blood, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” Set primarily in the rural South, O’Connor’s Southern Gothic stories, strongly influenced by her Catholic faith, often portrayed the spiritual transformation—often violent, always painful—of a flawed individual. In 1972, she was posthumously awarded a National Book Award for Collected Stories, and was the first twentieth-century fiction writer to be collected and published by the Library of America. The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, given annually by the University of Georgia Press, was named in her honour. O’Connor died in 1964 of complication from lupus.