Defense Date
2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
Sonja Livingston
Second Advisor
Gretchen Comba
Third Advisor
Katherine Nash
Fourth Advisor
Devon Walker-Figueroa
Fifth Advisor
Jessica Hendry Nelson
Abstract
The essays that make up Puritan fixate on themes of shame and desire, on mental illness as a kind of inheritance, and the schisms that often manifest within families. Organized as a braid of intertwining essays, this collection forms a complete memoir following the writer from the foundation of his radical evangelical upbringing through his recovery from severe, “Pure O,” obsessive-compulsive disorder. We encounter crumbling and derelict family homes where matriarchs resist inevitable collapse, bedrooms in which the writer seeks love with strangers, and emergency rooms wherein family denial comes to a head. Together, these essays evacuate these subjects from contemporary pop-psychology and therapy-speak, examining disordered thinking to find the humanity and, sometimes, their hidden, stolen pleasures.
As dark and unwieldy as its narrator’s mind, Firetrap is a novella in the tradition of the psychological novel. Louis thinks he is leaving his neuroses back in Manhattan when he follows his friend to the Fire Island Pines for the weekend. As Louis navigates the unbridled hedonism of the island, his usual uncontrollable obsessions and irrational fears soon seem to bleed into the world around him as his darkest thoughts are threatened to be revealed or even realized. A literary psychological thriller, Firetrap excavates and dramatizes the dark turns of the mind and questions if some realities are even stranger and darker than our worst fears.
Rights
© 2026 Reed Jamison Rickards
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-6-2026