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The middle of the twentieth century saw a brief renaissance of Catholic literary fiction, spearheaded by people like Graham Greene, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy. The moment didn’t last terribly long; by the 1970s, the literary establishment had mostly moved on to other things. But that doesn’t mean that Catholicism’s influence on American literary fiction disappeared. Our guest today on Christian Humanist Profiles is Nick Ripatrazone, whose new book, Longing for an Absent God, traces the Catholic thought of eight American authors whose commitment to the Catholic Church lies on a spectrum from devotion to hauntedness.