Everyone has been trying to see the big picture. We have been bombarded with a certain type of question. Who is the man or woman of the century—better, of the millennium? What are the happenings in the past thousand years that most changed the course of history?

Some day you would like to write a book about Catholicism in America as you have known it. You keep putting it off, and the relentless years keep passing. The book will probably never be written.

From 1957, a classic essay by Flannery O'Connor, who died 50 years ago on Sunday.

The story spans 60 years, and as Broderick tells the tale of Roza Mojewska and Otto Brack he tells the story of Poland itself, touching on Hitler’s goal of annihilating the Poles to give the Germans space.