Gilead: A Novel

Of God and Family

Family stories are curious things: You may look at your own with horror and fascination, while the family stories of other people seem benign, even dull. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's long awaited second novel, is structured on such a family tale, yet nearly every sentence demands to be savored. In 1950s Iowa, the seventy-six year old John Ames, believing that he is dying, begins writing a letter to his young son, the product of a late marriage to a younger woman. He means to tell his family history, and impart some wisdom for when he's not around. And since he is the Reverend John Ames, the grandson of preachers on both sides, it is also a story about religion. As he tells his son, "I'm writing your begats," and most of the family drama is based on religious conflict.

Ames's grandfather was a visionary abolitionist who preached his support of the civil war; when his son (Ames's father) became a pacifist, he betrayed his father by leaving his church and worshipping with Quakers. Ames's father is betrayed in kind by his elder son Edward, who became an atheist and derided his father's faith. The young Ames considers Edward's intellectual arguments carefully, but chooses to stay in the small, backwater town of Gilead, and take over his father's pulpit. He remains a reader and a deeply thoughtful man, however, and his faith is mellowed by a sense of its limitations and mysteries. Along with family stories, Ames's narrative is also a sort of diary in which he records snippets of his life with a wife and child. These portions sparkle with a wonder for existence and an appreciation for late-life gifts. It is in these prosaic asides that another narrative takes shape: Ames's namesake, Jack Ames Boughton, the son of his good friend Reverend Boughton, returns from a shady existence in St. Louis. Robinson builds some much needed suspense around Ames's conflicted feelings of distrust and affection for the younger man.

There has been much talk lately about a religious divide in this country. Gilead, then, may be the perfect book at the perfect time: a deeply empathetic and complex picture of a religious person that is also gorgeously written, and fascinating.

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