Includes bibliographical references (p. 242-246).

Home -- The Factory of Genius -- The Master Teacher -- "Normale" -- Community -- The Militant Years, 1931-34 -- The Year of Factory Work, 1934-35 -- The Budding of Faith, 1935-38 -- Toward God and War, 1938-39 -- Exile -- The Debacle -- Marseilles -- New York -- London -- Our Father Who Art in Secret.

In Simone Weil, du Plessix Gray vividly evokes the life a patriot, mystic, and activist, a pampered intellectual who believed in the redemptive value of manual labor, an ascetic who craved sensuous beauty, the daughter of a secular Jewish family who yearned to enter the Catholic Church, Simone Weil died at the age of thirty-four after a long struggle with anorexia. But her tremendous intellectual legacy foreshadowed many of the twentieth century's great changes and continues to influence religious thought today. Du Plessix Gray's biography traces Weil's transformation from privileged Parisian student to union organizer, activist, and philosopher, as well as the complex evolution of her ideas on Christianity, politics, and sexuality. This subtle and compelling biography illuminates an enigmatic figure and early feminist whose passion and pathos will fascinate a wide audience.