Flannery and Regina

Flannery and Regina tells the story of Flannery O’Connor and her mother, Regina, after Flannery’s lupus diagnosis forced her to move back to Milledgeville, Georgia. Just as her career as one of the twentieth century’s most distinguished writers of short fiction was beginning to take off, the disease that killed her father confined her to the family farm, Andalusia. The book fills in the gaps for fans of Flannery on the role of Regina in her life but more broadly presents a story of two women in the South of the 1950s and 1960s navigating financial independence, a changing rural landscape, and social norms.

It’s a story of a mother and daughter, sometimes understanding each other, often not, but trying to cobble together parallel and overlapping lives. Perhaps most interesting to readers of O’Connor, or anyone interested in the biography of an author no longer able to control a public image, is the detailing of how Regina tried to direct and cultivate Flannery’s image after her death, though we get the sense she understood very little of her daughter as an artist.