Marilynne Robinson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, sometimes referred to as “America’s George Eliot.” She grew up in Idaho and attended college at Pembroke and graduate school at the University of Washington, from which she earned her Ph.D. in English in 1977. Raised as a Presbyterian, Robinson became a Congregationalist. She has occasionally preached and has spent time researching and writing on the life and teachings of John Calvin as well as other prominent thinkers and philosophers.
Her first novel, Housekeeping, was published in 1980. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Anatole Broyard enthused, “It’s as if, in writing...