Crater Lake

Crater Lake is a novella that focuses tightly on Simone Evers and the events of her life in the summer following her mother’s disappearance. As she reflects on her memories, the gravity of her mother’s mental illness becomes clear, piece by piece. Through the literary device of retrospective narration, the story aims to portray the intensity and intricacy of the ‘coming-of-age’ years through the lens of reflection from the near future. Research to develop this work included a literary survey of novels that could be considered contemporary bildungsromane, an academic search of psychological texts to obtain objective information about Manic Depressive Disorder, and personal interviews of adults raised in closed evangelical communities. Crater Lake explores themes of mental illness and the associated societal stigma, the changing face of the nuclear family, the impact of zealous evangelism on the developing brain, and what it means to come of age as a woman in a patriarchal culture. The goal of this novella is to provoke consideration of the complexity of Manic Depressive Disorder through the use of disparate comparisons in the existentialist fiction tradition.Arts, Faculty ofGraduat