Andalusia, with its white siding and red roof, is happily situated on a hill facing a lawn framed by forest on one side and the avenue and a path leading to a natural pond on the other side. 

Walking out of the home onto the grounds, one could picture Flannery O’Connor’s various short stories — which took place in old houses, cow barns, down lonely lanes, and on farms in need of repair. In her day-to-day experience of the people around her on the farm and in the town of Milledgeville, Georgia, the writer had a wide experience of human nature and its quirks. 

We have often made religious pilgrimages on our road trips, but this was a literary one, to get to know a literary friend. 

When my children are adults, I hope that they remember with fondness our family road trips, those we take to visit family and friends, those we take to beautiful places, and those that are a little bit of each. We began the longer of our on-the-road treks, from our home in St. Paul, Minnesota, this past summer with a visit to my husband Mark’s grandparents in northern Georgia. A friend of mine, on hearing that we would be in Georgia, suggested that we stop at Andalusia, the farm where writer O’Connor lived from 1951, after her diagnosis with lupus at the age of 25, until her death in 1964. Unknown to this friend, Mark and I had just seen the new biopic of O’Connor, Wildcat, and read her novel Wiseblood. It was almost as if O’Connor herself was encouraging us to stop by her home, and we decided to drive two additional hours — making our drive eight hours total for the day.  

The first day of our trip, after praying our family Rosary, Mark read one of O’Connor’s short stories, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, aloud to the family. On the second day of driving towards the Peach State, he read us A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which takes place on a family road trip on country Georgian roads. Thus, several days later, after we bid farewell to Mark’s grandparents, our children (who range in age from 9 to 15) made continual references to both stories as we drove through the smoldering heat of a Southern June day.  

Every gravel road looked like one out of an O’Connor short story, but as we had to make good time, we did not do any exploring but kept to our course on U.S. Route 441. 

About quarter to 11 in the morning, we rolled into Milledgeville and pulled into the drive leading up to the Andalusia Interpretive Center. Stepping out into the oppressive heat of the sun, we slipped into the cool building to wait for the house tour that would begin on the hour. We perused the museum part of the center, which was recently built and opened by Georgia College & State University after the property was named a National Historic Landmark in 2022. We learned about the history of the house, which O’Connor’s uncle had purchased in 1931, and looked at display cases of the miniature figurines that O’Connor collected. We paid for the tour at the small gift shop and walked up to the house at the top of an avenue of trees to meet our tour guide.  

The row of rocking chairs on the house’s large, screened-in porch simply called for us to sit in them. (The tour did not bring us onto the porch, but we enjoyed the chairs at one of the other houses on the property and the Interpretive Center instead).  

Entering through the back door of the house, our tour began in the bedroom of O’Connor’s mother, Regina. When Flannery became sick with lupus, 10 years after her father died of the same disease, the mother and daughter moved to the inherited family farm. Flannery would spend her mornings going to daily Mass and then writing, and her afternoons were for resting and reading. Regina spent her days managing the farm and caring for her daughter. The farm was co-owned with Regina’s brother Louis Cline, who traveled a lot but had a back room added to the house for his use.  

The tour took us to the central room of the house where Regina would work every day, with doors open to the front of the house, the kitchen, the side and back. Upon entering the kitchen, our tour guide showed us the refrigerator that Flannery had purchased for her mother, as well as the original dishes and empty food containers.

The kitchen and the house contained nearly all the original furniture that had been left there since Flannery’s death, for Regina, upon the loss of her daughter, left the farm immediately, never to live there again. When it was given to the care of Georgia College, it was a sort of time capsule, to be slowly restored.  

In the front of the house was Flannery’s reading room, in which stood giant cabinet bookcases that had housed many of the author’s books. Regina donated all of Flannery’s books to Georgia College & State University — alas, we did not get a chance to look at her archives. But in her bedroom, there were many copies of books just like the ones she owned on the bookcases that lined the wall, including a missal and breviary. 

 

When Mark and I saw the film Wildcat, we wondered about the accuracy of various details in the film, including furniture placement. As it turned out, the film’s portrayal of Flannery’s desk in the center of her bedroom, stationed behind her wardrobe and stacked with small shelves on which she placed a miniature shrine of Our Lady, was accurate. Our tour guide suggested that Flannery chose this arrangement to make it easy for her to move from her bed to her desk and to have the door to her mother’s adjoining room out of sight as she wrote.  

Like all writers, Flannery liked to finish her sentence before addressing the person who interrupted her thoughts.  

Anything in her bedroom that was not original was replaced with similar items and set up to replicate how her room had actually been, from the crutches propped beside the bed to the same make of typewriter on her desk. Thus, we were able to see her room, as she would have lived and written in it, as she fought off lupus and tried to make a name for herself. 

 

Upon exiting the house, we walked past the water tower and well house, towards the cage of the peacock and peafowl — only the fowl deigned to come into view. 

O’Connor’s flock of 40-plus peafowl was left in her will to multiple places, including the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit. On our way to the Hill House, where residential farmers lived in O’Connor’s day, we spied the horse barn, equipment shed and the dairy and calf barns. As the day was hot, and the tour guide had warned us about seeing a rattle snake, we decided to head back to the Interpretive Center and continue our trip. If we had had more time, we would have gone into Milledgeville to see Sacred Heart Church and view the archives at Georgia College.  

I spent the rest of the summer reading a biography of O’Connor, and in reading that and seeing the place she lived, I have found that I more deeply appreciate her work. At face value, her dark twists and grotesque characters can be off-putting, but she had a unique insight into the depths of human experience and gave hope that grace can penetrate even the most unlikely of circumstances. But perhaps, one has to get to know her for oneself.