Some Christians turn to the Bible or hagiographies for saintly inspiration.
Jessica Hooten Wilson finds it not only there, but also in the writings of Flannery O'Connor, Graham Greene and Wendell Berry.
In "The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination In the Company of Literary Saints," Wilson maintains that good fiction can be fertile soil for "seeing how to live a holy life."
The Siloam Springs intellectual's latest book, which is published by Brazos Press, is set to be released next month.
"For me, when I try to imagine how to be holy, I have a cloud of witnesses -- from Dostoevsky's Father Zosima, to Walker Percy's Father Smith, to Willa Cather's Archbishop Latour, to Toni Morrison's Baby Suggs," Wilson writes in her introduction.
"Some characters encounter saints along their journey and share the experience with the reader, that we may long for such sanctity," she writes in the introduction. "Others attain holiness at the end of their long, wayward lives. But none of these figures are satisfied with their self as it is; all of them desire holiness," she writes. "It is the story of a life lived in longing for the holy that I most want to emulate."
The book highlights dozens of noteworthy books and each chapter contains a devotional section, featuring Scriptures, wisdom or prayer from the saints, quotations from key literary works, discussion questions and a recommended reading list.
Albert Cheng, an assistant professor in education policy at the University of Arkansas, said Wilson is a "deep thinker" who "wrestles with ultimate questions of import and has something to say, uniquely, [and] with humility as well."
Wilson's interest in holiness was heightened after she received a Fulbright award to teach at a university in Czechoslovakia.
The people she encountered recognized she was from the United States; they generally had no idea she was a follower of Jesus Christ, she said.
"As a Christian, I assumed that people ... would know that you were Christian. You would stand out. You'd stand apart. And instead, I'm in Prague, and everyone's noticing how American I am, but no one was noticing anything different about the way that I was living my life, and that very much disturbed me," she said.
"I don't want to go to God when I die and say, 'I was a really good American.' I want to be able to carry something better than that with me. I want to have a larger witness. Something that people could actually see," she said.
Exemplars of holiness, she realized, can be found in fiction as well as nonfiction.
"As a Christian and as an evangelical, and as someone who studies literature, I turned to literature for finding those examples. Who were the people I wanted to be like, the characters that I wanted to be like, in books," she said.
The book is ecumenical, featuring works by major Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox writers. It is also international, highlighting authors from around the globe.
Wilson, a former John Brown University professor, is currently Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas, but continues to live in Arkansas.
A prolific writer, she had three books published between 2017 and 2018: "Reading Walker Percy's Novels" (Louisiana State University Press); "Walker Percy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Search for Influence" (Ohio State University Press); and "Giving the Devil His Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky" (Cascade Books).
The latter book received one of Christianity Today's 2018 Book Awards, designating it as one of the books "most likely to shape evangelical life, thought and culture."
In 2019, the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture awarded her the Hiett Prize in the Humanities. The honor -- and the $50,000 that accompanies it -- is designed to recognize "a person whose work in the humanities shows extraordinary promise for the future, and who is already making a difference in the way we think about the world."
In 2020, Wilson co-edited "Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West."
Today, Wilson is a much sought-after public speaker, appearing on college campuses across the country. She is also working with the estate of Flannery O'Connor to complete the renowned writer's unfinished third novel, "Why Do the Heathen Rage?"
Wilson currently works for a leading Catholic university, but she grew up in the Churches of Christ.
Raised in Texas, she earned her bachelor's degree in creative writing from Pepperdine University, which has Church of Christ roots, and a doctorate in religion and literature from a Baptist institution, Baylor University.
In between, she completed a master's degree in English from the University of Dallas.
In Wilson's latest book, she cautions against a shallow, happy-go-lucky Christianity.
"Christian readers especially are guilty of succumbing to a vision of the Christian life that is all rainbows above Noah's ark, Christ high-fiving people out of the grave, and gleeful Christians donning 'Light of the World' T-shirts," Wilson writes.
The reality of the Christian life, she maintains, was better captured by O'Connor.
"What people don't realize is how much religion costs," the late Catholic author once wrote. "They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross."