Four people in a small Southern mill town find in a mute an answer to the riddles of their lives: tomboy Mick Kelly, growing up with a genius for music and no opportunity to express it; Jake Blount, ranting among half-truths; the disillusioned Negro dreamer, Dr. Copeland; and observing, soft-spoken Biff Brannon. The lives of these four interweave; each gropes for a solution to his problems; each feels that an answer, or at least a kind of inner peace,...

From the Publisher: The collection that established O'Connor's reputation as one of the American masters of the short story. The volume contains the celebrated title story, a tale of the murderous fugitive The Misfit, as well as "The Displaced Person" and eight other stories.

"Wedged between the bluffs and the river for which it's named, there's a small and all-but-forgotten town. Janie Treeborne lives on an orchard at the edge of Elberta, Alabama, and in time, she has become its keeper. A place where conquistadors once walked, and where the peaches they left behind now grow, Elberta has seen fierce battles, violent storms, and frantic change--and when the town is once again threatened from without, Janie realizes it won't...