Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Author: Marilynne Robinson

Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Classics

Synopsis:

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, Gilead is the second novel by Marilynne Robinson, one of our finest writers. It is a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that its narrator loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.

In 1956, toward the end of his life, the Reverend John Ames begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowa preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and went west to Kansas to fight for abolition. He preached men into the Civil War, then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, later losing his right eye in battle.

Reverend Ames writes about the tension between his father—an ardent pacifist—and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. He tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, bonds that have been tested in his tender but strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.

This is also the tale of another remarkable vision—not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.

Format: Paperback, 247 pages

Setting: United States

Series: Gilead (#1)

Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2005), Orange Prize for Fiction Longlist (2006), PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for (2005), Ambassador Book Award for Fiction (2005), Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (2004), Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction (2005), Rodda Book Award for None (2006), National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2004), Frederic G. Melcher Book Award for (2004), Society of Midland Authors Award for Adult Fiction (2005), Grawemeyer Award for Religion (2006)

Goodreads Rating: 3.85

*This book is pre-loved, but has been carefully looked through to ensure it is not missing any pages and is in good condition. All visible flaws have been documented in the product photos.