The Black Veil

In his early twenties, having already lived a lifetime of excess, Rick Moody found himself stranded in a depression so profound that he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Here, Moody tells the story of his collapse and recovery. Woven through his own story, Moody also traces his family's paternal line, looking for clues to his own melancholy - in particular to one ancestor, Reverend Joseph Moody, about whom Nathanial Hawthorn wrote an archetypal study of shame entitled 'The Minister's Black Veil'.