This 1955 volume brought together three works by O'Connor in a single book. It contains her first novel, Wise Blood, together with two other pieces of her fiction, and so offered readers an early view of her talents in both long and short forms.
The material shares her familiar world of the rural and small-town South, where preachers, drifters and ordinary families are caught up in questions of faith, pride and redemption. The writing is spare, funny and often shocking. As a combined edition it overlaps with her other books, but it shows how quickly her voice appeared fully formed.