The Strange Birds of Flannery O'Connor, A Life

As a young girl, writer Flannery O’Connor was captivated by the chickens in her yard. She’d watch their wings flap, their beaks peck, and their eyes glint. At age six, her life was forever changed when she and a chicken she had been training to walk backwards were featured in the Pathé News. She realized then that people were interested in the strange oddities of life. While she loved birds of all varieties and kept several species around the house as a child, it was peacocks that eventually came to dominate her adult life. “My quest, whatever it was actually for, ended with peacocks. Instinct, not knowledge, led me to them...I intend to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply, for I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs.”— Flannery O’Connor. 

Written by Amy Alznauer with devotional attention to all things odd, and radiantly marking the children's book debut of illustrator Ping Zhu, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor explores the beginnings of an author’s lifelong obsession with the magnificent oddities of our world.