For Purdy, Christ's message was the last great event—the critical idea—in the history of human consciousness: "love one another as I have loved you." But Purdy is also a Calvinist (by way of Presbyterianism); he's a firm believer in man's fallen state…. When you put Christ and Calvin together, you wind up with the conflict at the heart of Purdy's vision: Christ held out the hope for love; lapsarian man continually assures love's defeat; hence, terror.

So Purdy's books are love/horror stories. In a significant sense, they are typically American tales of love and death…. They are chronicles of thwarted, aborted, twisted, hopeless, failed love. Purdy examines aspects of eros that we'd rather not acknowledge: the part of love that is hate; love as a struggle for supremacy; love as a constantly shifting pattern of submission and dominance; lovemaking as an act of revenge, or...