Can We Still Believe in Goodness?
The Lime Kiln and Other Enchanted Spaces by Geoffrey Reiter (Hippocampus Press, 2025)
Reviewed by Sarah Selden Linville
The American literary canon, and indeed the literary canon in general, is typically averse to “genre fiction.” Lists that speculate what the “Great American Novel” might be are full of examples of realistic fiction, including titles like The Great Gatsby, Moby-Dick, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Realistic stories like these allow writers plenty of space to develop complex characters and probe deep moral questions without also creating a complex magic system or otherworldly realm for their readers to understand. Perhaps this is the reason that usually missing from these lists are works of fantasy, science fiction, and horror.
When it comes to American short fiction, however, this rule doesn’t stand. Perhaps the most classic American short stories—the ones most typically taught in American high schools and college literature survey courses—are works of horror. Sparknotes has even created a series of memes reflecting what it’s like for a high school student to read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” for the first time, which ends with a horrific, Hunger-Games-style community event. Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is another secondary school mainstay, and is often lauded as an excellent work of horror fiction. And, of course, Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic short stories are some of the most famous in American literature.
This legacy of American horror fiction continued into the 20th century with the rise of Flannery O’Connor, whose short stories are known for their terrifying elements, made more horrific by their plausibility. In one story, a family of six is murdered by an escaped convict during a road trip from Florida to Georgia. In another, a man named Mr. Shiftlet promises to marry a woman’s mute, disabled daughter in exchange for a car, and then leaves the daughter at a diner in the middle of nowhere. Set in the midcentury American South, before the widespread use of telephones, these scenarios are realistic enough to be believed as possible.
What sets O’Connor’s work apart from other typical horror stories, however, is that in the midst of despair there is always hope. O’Connor was a devout Catholic, and her faith undergirds all her stories, despite their mostly unfortunate outcomes. According to literary critic Amy Shearn, O’Connor employs “grotesqueness and violence in her stories to illustrate the workings of grace on her characters.” Having grace for Mr. Shiftlet is difficult, but this is the situation O’Connor sought to create in her stories again and again—to expose the characters, and the reader, to the idea of grace. Yet she didn’t do this didactically. She did not want to be seen as a “Christian writer,” and so many of her stories can be read without the Catholic lens and enjoyed for their horror elements.
Lancaster Bible College Associate Professor and Coordinator of Humanities Geoffrey Reiter continues O’Connor’s tradition in his 2025 short story collection The Lime Kiln and Other Enchanted Spaces. Like O’Connor, Reiter uses horror and the uncanny to explore theological and moral questions. Just as O’Connor ties place to Southern identity, Reiter roots his horror in the landscapes of rural Pennsylvania. However, his stories go beyond the purely American settings of O’Connor—while much of The Lime Kiln takes place in rural Pennsylvania, they also almost all include some sort of supernatural element or otherworldly realm. Per the blurb on the back of the book, “[Reiter’s] tales, far from being mere shudder-coining, probe profound questions of the self and of humanity’s relationship to the boundless cosmos.” Throughout the collection, Reiter—like O’Connor—challenges readers to believe in the enduring power of goodness despite seemingly insurmountable evil, and to reflect on how place shapes the ongoing struggle between the two.
The collection’s opening story, “Testing the Spirits,” begins Reiter’s discussion of the power of the good. In this story, members of a Christian rock band are slowly murdered by their leader during a “lock-in” writing session as he weaponizes biblical tenets against them. Like O’Connor, Reiter challenges his readers to consider whether we can hope in the good, even when those who are perhaps supposed to be the “most good” in society turn out to be the most evil.
Another story in the collection, “Desiree,” examines more contemporary fears. This story is told from the perspective of a malicious robot attempting to seduce a human, Cody, so that it can bring him back to its apartment and “assimilate” his human elements into itself so that it won’t be “terminated” (85). This piece’s twist in the ending once again challenges readers to question whether they can believe that the goodness of humans can overcome the fears (and realities) of artificial intelligence as it becomes more and more human-like, and to consider the moral implications of such technological advancement.
While “Testing the Spirits” and “Desiree” deal with the most realistic and human form of darkness in Reiter’s collection, in the majority of his other stories, his characters face supernatural beings or forces that challenge their pursuit of the good. These stories challenge readers to consider both the power of the good within themselves as well as the forces of good and evil that may be tied to place. In “Big Sky,” a nun travels to the remote home of some parishioners who claim that they are physically unable to leave their house. When she arrives, Joe, the homeowner, tells her, “I went to take the jeep into town to pick up some breakfast, and... I just couldn’t do it…I get what you’re thinking. I can’t explain it. I kept driving and driving and somehow, the jeep just ended up back here” (58).
After promising their young daughter that she would get rid of the “something” that is binding them to their land, Sister Monique must work with Joe to exorcise it. It is ultimately the power of this promise that aids her in freeing their property from what they have now identified as a demon. As in many of Reiter’s stories, the actual defeat of the evil force happens quickly, and almost unbelievably. Just after Sister Monique remembers her promise to Joe’s daughter, she “claims” her promise in the face of the dark forces, which ultimately leads to the demon’s quick demise:
Whatever she did in the realm of principalities and powers, it felt to her body as though her arms were being tugged on a rack of scalding iron. The jolt of ceased motion, the sear of solid fire, these were as real to her as any martyr’s last moments. But they didn’t last long; the pain cleared her vision, opened her eyes to the terrestrial Montana night, the entrance to the mine, and the ruddy, wide-eyed countenance of Josiah Wilder, who was holding on to her right arm. (72-73)
Just by thinking about her promise, Sister Monique is able to both free the demon from the mine, the first step in freeing Joe’s family, and to inexplicably transport herself and Joe out of its depths. The story then ends with Joe and Sister Monique shooting the demon with Joe’s gun as it tries to flee into the night sky. There is no drawn-out battle between good and evil or major challenge for them to overcome—it is simply the power of Sister Monique’s goodness that sets them free. Again, Reiter asks the reader to believe that the goodness of these characters, and more importantly, the fact that they are on the side of the good, is much more powerful than any deep spiritual evil we may encounter.
While Reiter and O’Connor share many similarities between the gory content in their stories and the messaging behind it, Reiter’s supernatural elements set his stories apart, sometimes to their detriment. It is difficult to build both a convincing magic system and characters in the span of a few pages, and some of his stories suffer as a result. Perhaps the strongest piece in the collection is The Cartographer, which is a novella-length story about a man named Caleb who finds a mysterious map with “lines that begin to move” (204). This story both continues and fully fleshes out the discussion of place Reiter begins in “Big Sky.” In The Cartographer, Caleb and a cartographer, Dina, must follow the ever-changing map into a supernatural realm beneath their small Pennsylvania town to defeat an evil being. Throughout the story, Reiter develops Caleb and Dina into well-rounded, complex characters and builds a magic system that asks readers to consider the function of maps—might they tell us not only “what a place was, or how to get there,” but also about the “why” (213)? Dina argues that “places—at least some places have being, Mr. Graff. Your family has farmed the same land for three centuries. Don’t tell me you don’t know that spaces can have… a soul? An essence?” (213). As Caleb follows Dina into the magical realm beneath his hometown, he, and readers, must think about the supernatural power of place, and whether our own goodness can overcome the evils of the past.
While some of Reiter’s stories are perhaps too ambitious in scope for their length, ultimately, The Lime Kiln and Other Enchanted Spaces affirms that horror and supernatural fiction can serve as fertile ground for exploring questions of theological and moral complexity. Throughout the collection, Reiter reminds readers of the power of the good within us and suggests that this goodness can help bring healing from the traumas of the past, making his collection ultimately an impactful message of hope—the message that yes, even in the midst of great evil, we can still hope in the good. By blending horror with this message, Reiter continues the legacy of Flannery O’Connor and reasserts that genre fiction belongs firmly within the tradition of great American storytelling.
Sarah Selden earned her bachelor's in English and secondary education at Palm Beach Atlantic University and her master's in English and American studies at the University of Oxford. She has taught English in Palm Beach County, in Spain on a Fulbright grant, and currently teaches in Littleton, Colorado.
