Jill Peláez Baumgaertner – författare

The Unbinding chronicles a woman's experience of finding her way through and out of a twenty-year marriage rooted in domestic violence, as well as her continued unbinding from trauma. The abuse she survives is particularly insidious due to the fact that she is married to a pastor, and thus it includes not just emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual abuse, but also spiritual abuse. Settings and images of everyday life provide a gateway into a remarkable journey, the telling of which is vivid and dark, yet ultimately hopeful. The woman at the center of this journey survives due to her children--a manifestation to her of grace in the world--and her grit.

"e;To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures."e;--Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and MannersDrowning in a river, the violent murder of a grandmother in the backwoods of Georgia, and the trans-genital display of a freak at a carnival show are all shocking literary devices used by Flannery O'Connnor, one of American literature's best pulp fiction writers. More than thirty-five years after her death, readers are still shocked by O'Connor's grotesque images. Dr. Jill Baumgaertner concentrates on O'Connor's use of emblems, those moments of sudden and horrid illumination when the sacred and the profane merge as sacrament. This readable volume is ideal for college students, O'Connor scholars, or those wishing to better understand southern gothic fiction.

What Cannot Be Fixed is anchored in the terrain of the broken world: the old Adam, the prodigal son, loneliness, exile, and Christ's cries of abandonment on the cross. There is much that cannot be fixed, but in the midst of the loss are the flashes and glimmers of promise, of Advent, of reunion, the empty tomb, and grace. Words uncurl in Eve's throat, the conductor raises his baton in that split second before the music begins, the blind see, the atheist heart patient hears God in the music of the recovery room. God is there, his shape sometimes difficult to discern, his words often whispers amidst the daily-ness of life. This collection of poems is about living the paradox: simul justus et peccator--the believer is both justified and a sinner. It is true that much of what we see and live cannot be fixed. And it is also true that the potter reworks the broken pot.