Much of the first half of the novel’s letter contains his reminiscences of youth. He remembers his father and his father’s father, both of them ministers. His grandfather supported the abolitionists, killed a soldier chasing after John Brown and his men and fought in the Civil War. But Ames’s father cannot stand by his own father, who led so many of his own congregation into the war; he tells him off and leaves Kansas to found his own church in Gilead. Years later after the estrangement, in one of the most moving sections of the book, John Ames will accompany his father to Kansas where they search for his grandfather’s grave. When they find it a quiet moment exchanged between three generations of family, all men with the same name. While saying a final prayer on the soul of their dead relation, Ames looks up into the sky and witnessing the celestial bodies of the heavens has a moment of epiphany:

A full moon rising just as the sun was going down. Each of them was standing on its edge, with the most wonderful light between them. It seemed as if you could touch it, as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or as if there were great taut skeins of light suspended between them.

The novel contains many such descriptions of the light of nature and the light of goodness and knowledge Ames delights in, the Christ-like actions that make up his life. Though soon a figure will come to town to challenge his final days of revelry.

It is another John Ames, the fourth in the novel, who will present the most challenge to the narrator. John Ames Boughton (though he goes by Jack) is the godson of John Ames. His friend Boughton, a Presbyterian minister, named his son after him and insisted he baptize the boy. Throughout the novel Ames remembers Boughton as a troubled youth. He has been gone for some years and returns for an unknown reason to live with his father for a while. When Boughton arrives he immediately strikes up a friendship with Ames’s son and not long after his wife. As a voyeur, John Ames watches his wife and son with Boughton, wondering what they see in him. Soon his long letter to his son becomes a diary of confessions. Though he is a minister he is not perfect; he suffers from envy and covetousness. It is not until Boughton delivers a confession of his own that Ames softens. It is this confession with an eye to Ames’s past generations that brings ‘Gilead’ to not so much a climax but a moment of resolve in Ames’s life. He will be able to sit back and rest in his final days. Boughton, with a life full of conflict, will continue his story off the pages of the novel. He is the motivating character, but sadly his tale ends as soon as he leaves town.

Robinson’s strong lyrical voice continues in this novel as it did in ‘Housekeeping’. The prose is dazzling and certain sentences make one cringe in recognition of true beauty starting with the musicality of the first sentence: “I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old.” The difference is this narrative, like John Ames himself, is stuck in the small town of Gilead, loyal to the generations of his family. The novel has no chapter delineations, just breaks to new sections of the letter. I believe this is a challenge for the reader because there is never anywhere for her to stop and rest. Late in the book, Ames relates even his father left Gilead and chastised his son for his loyalty to it. In much the same way, due to her narration, Robinson keeps the novel in this small town, not branching out to follow Boughton’s story. The reader is caught in John Ames’s first person narration, a choice I question. In third person the reader would get more viewpoints, more descriptions of the town, as well as more on Boughton and other characters. As a result, Boughton’s story, the most interesting in the novel, could continue on to a resolution.

Gilead is an insular town and for those who desire details of a vanished way of living, the book is a wonder. The world John Ames lives in is so idyllic and pastoral there is little to relate to. Given Ames is a priest; he has concerns different from the average person. There is a small section on Ludwig Feuerbach, the famous German atheist, where Ames contemplates baptism. Certainly Ames deals with conflicting feelings toward Boughton at the end, but for the first two-thirds of the book, in moments when he muses on the antics of his housecat, the story slows into long valleys where only a few shadows from a determined and steadfast readership will be cast. When Boughton finally shows up it is too late; he is not a threat to peacefulness of Gilead. The narrative has bent too far in one direction, namely stories and advice to instruct and fill one over the course of life. Boughton will leave the town as he once did.

Marilynne Robinson is one of America’s finest authors. A poet complying her verses into a dense and grand style of prose. ‘Gilead’ is a beautiful fiction. One just wonders what it may have looked like outside of the mind of John Ames. Would there be more bones beneath the dust and ashes of the small town? Would the black of night more fully obscure the light in the town of Gilead and the soul of John Ames?

Greg Gerke lives in Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in Pedestal Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Hobartpulp, Apt, Rive Gauche, VerbSap and Ghoti. He has one book of short fiction: Fiction for a Sound Bitten Age. His website is here.