Gilead is the second novel of Marilynne Robinson and was published in 2004. It piqued critical interest from the start, since it was published over twenty years after Robinson's acclaimed debut, Housekeeping. Gilead reflects this deliberate hiatus in its measured, contemplative tone and profound depth.
The novel is written from the perspective of John Ames, a Congregationalist minister in his seventies who has lived his entire life in the small, prairie town of Gilead, Iowa. After decades living as a single man after his wife died in childbirth along with the baby, John unexpectedly married in his late sixties, and he now has a young son. The book is written as a letter to this son as...
