Literary Fiction · ThoughtfulAn aging Iowa minister writes a long letter to his young son in 1956
Gilead
An aging minister writes a long letter to his young son
In 1956, John Ames, an elderly minister in a small Iowa town, writes a letter to his young son about his life and family history. He tells of his grandfather, a minister who went to Kansas to fight slavery and later served as a Union army chaplain, and of his father, a committed pacifist. He also reflects on his strained relationship with John Ames Boughton, the troubled son of his best friend. A novel about faith, fathers and sons, and how the past stays with people across generations.
More about this book
Who
John Ames, a 76-year-old Congregationalist minister who knows he is dying of a heart condition, and his seven-year-old son, the person he is writing for. His close friend is Boughton, a Presbyterian minister.
World
The fictional town of Gilead, Iowa, in 1956. Robinson based it loosely on Tabor, Iowa, a center of abolitionist activity.
What makes it different
The whole book is one continuing document, part journal and part memoir, written on several occasions as a record for a son who will have few memories of his father. Ames tells of his grandfather, an abolitionist preacher who fought in the Civil War, and his father, a pacifist preacher. Gilead is the first of four novels about these characters, followed by Home, Lila and Jack.
Feel
Reflective and contemplative, about faith, mortality and family. It won the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.