LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Flannery O'Connor did not expect to become the subject of a biography. She thought the narrow borders of her life -- lived "between the house and the chicken yard" -- wouldn't give a writer much to work with.



Author Flannery O'Connor (here with two of her peacocks) remains a subject of fascination for many.



It would therefore come as a surprise (and probably secretly please her) to learn she is the focus of at least three.



The latest is "Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor" (Little, Brown) by Brad Gooch, an exhaustively researched exploration of O'Connor's unlikely journey from shy, sarcastic and "contrary" Georgia girl to acerbic literary treasure.



That she suffered from lupus and died before the age of 40 is well-known to fans of O'Connor. But Gooch uncovers much that even ardent followers of the author will find revealing, including details of her college career as a cartoonist, and her time in Iowa City at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.



The book manages to synthesize what seems difficult to reconcile: how such a chaste, religious person could produce stories that are bitingly funny and filled with shocking violence.  Watch O'Connor's fascinating story »



Gooch spoke with CNN about his experience researching the biography. What follows is an edited version of the interview.



CNN: When did you first discover Flannery O'Connor?



Brad Gooch: I first read her stories in my 20s and loved them, and then a little later, the [collected] letters came up, "The Habit of Being." And I'd had a few hunches about her from reading the stories, which were a little mysterious. ... And then when I read the letters, a lot of those hunches seemed true. ...



Trying to put the life of this woman together with the stories became as interesting as the stories to me.



CNN: She wasn't always known as Flannery O'Connor.



Gooch: Her name was Mary Flannery O'Connor, and her mother and everyone in Milledgeville (Georgia), where she lived most of her life, continued to call her Mary Flannery. But when she went to Iowa City -- the Iowa Writers' Workshop -- early on, she decided she wanted to be a writer, and she decided on the name Flannery. She later said, "Who would want to buy these stories of an Irish washerwoman named Mary O'Connor?"



Partly, I think she wanted to lose the Southern-ness of "Mary Flannery." ...  Also, Flannery was a gender-neutral name. ... Her initial rejection letters were actually addressed to "Mr. Flannery O'Connor," and I think she kind of liked that neutrality.



CNN: What did you find most remarkable about her?



Gooch: I think the discipline of her writing becomes ... almost inspiring. She developed lupus when she was 25, she lived until she was 39. And in that period, she kept up this regimen that she had begun at the Iowa Writers' Workshop of writing every morning for three hours, even if it meant sitting in front of a blank page. ...



[Near the end of her life] she was editing her final stories and hiding them under the pillow in the hospital from the doctors so that she could go on. She was still working on her last story after she had last rites. ... All of that is a sort of [a] level of commitment that is startling and unmatched.



CNN: Her stories are often funny, yet disturbing.



Gooch: Her style goes under these names, like grotesque or gothic, but she was really crossing these two wires of humor and almost this kind of dark theological writing that had never been put together before. ...



[In "A Good Man is Hard to Find"] a family on vacation ... meets someone named the Misfit, this ex-con in the woods. ... And he winds up shooting the entire family while spouting existentialist, nihilist philosophy.



And in that story, there's always a point where you keep laughing past
What caused the death of O'Connor?
lupus
question: What caused the death of O'Connor?, answer: lupus