Twenty-five years ago, J.F. Powers reached a summit in his literary career and chose that moment to make a surprising announcement. After building a quietly distinguished reputation with two collections of stories, Prince of Darkness (1947) and The Presence of Grace (1956), he had just won the National Book Award for his 1962 novel Morte D'Urban. In the hubbub after his prize, Powers dropped his revelation. His next novel, he told reporters, would not have a priest in it.
No priest? Why, virtually everything Powers had written till then had been about Roman Catholic clergymen in out-of-the-way Midwestern parishes. He had...
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