Conscious and Unconscious in America, Part One: Rochester Unconscious is a bold, intimate, and deeply reflective literary work about childhood, family, memory, identity, and the hidden forces that shape an artist's life.

In this opening volume of Richard Thomas's ambitious trilogy, Michael/Richard looks back to Rochester, New York, where love, religion, television, ethnic identity, neighborhood life, school, shame, comedy, rebellion, and imagination all helped form the writer he would become. What begins as a personal excavation becomes something larger: a study of American family life, cultural pressure, class, faith, creativity, and the unconscious patterns that follow a person into adulthood.

This is not a conventional coming-of-age novel. It is a consciousness narrative, a literary self-investigation that moves through childhood memories, family mythology, social observation, cultural criticism, and philosophical reflection. Thomas writes with intensity, humor, anger, tenderness, and sharp moral awareness, turning private experience into a larger meditation on what it means to become oneself in America.

For readers drawn to literary fiction, autobiographical fiction, artist-centered stories, psychological self-discovery, and books about family, memory, and American culture, Rochester Unconscious offers a challenging and original journey into the making of a writer's mind.