Wise Blood

Hazel Motes returns from the war determined to prove that redemption is unnecessary, and founds the Church Without Christ to say so on street corners in a Tennessee city. Around him gather a fraudulent blind preacher, a boy who steals a mummified corpse, and a man who takes over his ministry for money. O’Connor’s first novel is grotesque, very funny, and entirely serious about the thing its protagonist cannot argue his way out of.