In the novel Father Melancholy’s Daughter, Gail Godwin creates a narrative of a priest who is prone to bouts of depression, who earns the nickname “Father Melancholy” from his parishoners. Throughout the book, Father Melancholy describes his depression as getting lost behind a Black Curtain, and he can’t find his way out. When encouraged by his wife to take antidepressants prescribed by his well-loved doctor, Father Melancholy says that he wants to get to the bottom of it, to “look the damn thing in the face… to help me see… well, I don’t know what,” so that he could emerge triumphant. His emergences in the novel are always sudden. The passage that struck me most about his emergence was when he told his wife that “these mashed potatoes are creamy and delicious, the ham is tasty, and I have a new book from the library I’m looking forward to reading later.” And as a firsthand sufferer of bouts of depression, I can assure that these sudden emergences sometimes ...