Not too long ago depression was explained to us almost entirely in psychological terms, while today experts seem to regard it an mainly a physical disease -- a consequence of disturbed brain chemistry and subject to treatment by pill or capsule like any other disease. Bio-psycho-social influences are recognised, but these days the accent is definitely on the bio. This unusual book presents the stories of seven mourners -- strugglers with varieties of depression -- sufferers from the malady and maladies of our time. The main goal is to illustrate the complex interweaving of biological and psychological factors with personality, character, life circumstances and with forces -- such as love and courage and generosity and beauty -- that, unless reduced and explained away in psychological terms, are usually neglected in the psychological and psychiatric literature. The people in these stories are composites of real people, the details of whose lives have been altered. None of these mourners is a therapeutic being. Each, in Walker Percy's terms, is a Asovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher.