The film opens with
Flannery O'Connor, an idiosyncratic young Southern writer and faithful Catholic, imagining a melodramatic movie trailer with a crazed, nymphomaniac boarder, Star Drake (played by Maya Hawke, who also plays O'Connor and multiple other roles) getting her boarding-house hosts into violent trouble. Many other imaginary and real episodes then occur, often following various
short stories of O'Connor, including "
The Comforts of Home", "
Everything That Rises Must Converge", "
Good Country People", "
The Life You Save May Be Your Own", "
Revelation", and "
Parker's Back", as well as a scene from her novel
The Violent Bear It Away and monologues adapted from O'Connor's non-fiction
A Prayer Journal. After winning a writing competition, she travels to New York to get approval from a publisher for her novel,
Wise Blood, but refuses the request that she outline her work. She discusses her novel with
Robert Lowell, who describes O'Connor as his most talented student and with whom she has mutual romantic feelings (though Lowell eventually marries Elizabeth Hardwick, whom O'Connor meets at a writers' party where she does not get along well with other guests). Coming back from New York, she feels tired and has facial rashes; she learns she has
lupus, of which her father died. She refuses to see a doctor for a while, but finally gets treatment for the illness. Eventually she needs to use crutches, at one point falling down the stairs. Her mother Regina, who occasionally demonstrates her racist prejudices, tries to help and support her, even if she does not always enjoy Flannery's writings and sees them as abrasive. Flannery buys a
peacock for herself as a comfort. An Irish priest counsels her about her internal struggles; she mentions
James Joyce's
Ulysses being banned in Ireland, which he agrees is needless. When O'Connor describes her difficulties to be a good Catholic, the priest recommends she do acts of charity and use her writing for that purpose. After receiving a letter from Lowell about his marriage to Hardwick, Flannery settles into a life of concentrated writing. The film ends with an
intertitle shown before the closing credits to inform the viewer that O'Connor continued to live for another fourteen years, eventually succumbing to what she called "the French wolf" (lupus). The final on-screen text after the credits is her quotation about her gratitude to thousands of pigs whose
pituitary glands were used for making the lupus injections that kept her alive. ==Cast==