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Read With Us2026-02-17T08:49:11-05:00

Read With Us Selection
Winter 2026

Gilead
by Marilynne Robinson

General Information About the Book

247 pages, paperback

First published October 28, 2004

Genre – literary fiction, epistolary novel

Recognition: Gilead has won numerous book awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle award, and was an Oprah’s Book Club pick.

Setting – Gilead, Iowa; American Midwest

Availability – Available in paperback ($10.35 Amazon), Kindle ($5.99), and audio (Audible $13.12 or 1 credit). The book and audiobook are generally available through local libraries and Libby, although availability and wait times vary.



“Just a few pages into the novel the reader can see why it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005—and why it continues to enthrall. Robinson has spent the better part of two decades, in four stand-alone novels that connect through their characters and settings, exploring the notion that, as the author has observed, beauty is “a casual glimpse of something ordinary.” Her moral authority is commanding, and her ear for our country’s language—its conversational rhythms, its plainspokenness—is impeccable. Here’s a writer who listens to us all, as well as to the yearnings of her characters.”

        — Hamilton Cain, Oprah Daily, 2021

Join Us For the Book Discussion on Zoom

Tuesday, March 17, 2026, 7:00 pm Eastern time
Questions will also be posted on our blogs: Highly Reasonable, Carole Knits, Dancing At the Edge.

Please RSVP to receive Zoom link information by emailing Kym (email in sidebar) by September 15, 2025. Thank you.

“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them is sufficient.””  — from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
              

Brief Synopsis

From Picador Reading Group Guides

Told through the eyes of a Midwestern minister nearing the end of his life, Gilead unfolds in the form of a letter. As Reverend Ames writes to his young son, we learn of the family’s legacy, a heritage steeped in abolition, economic hardship, and conflicting views on religion and war as each generation comes of age. The 1950s find John Ames comparing his grandfather, a fiery Union Army chaplain, to his devoutly pacifist father while a gentle turn of events poses the question of racial equality in new terms.Throughout the novel, he recalls a life shaped by love for his faith, his vocation and his church, for prayer, for his town and all it has meant, for his father and grandfather, for his books, for baseball, for his lifelong friend, for his physical life and the splendors of the physical world, for his memories, and for the young wife and infant child to whom he remains loyal over solitary decades.

Stirring an array of questions regarding peace and turmoil, faith and disillusionment, memory and mortality, Gilead illuminates each facet of these issues with sparkling precision. 

 

Information About the Author

Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home (2008), winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Lila (2014), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Jack (2020), a New York Times bestseller. Her first novel, Housekeeping (1980), won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Robinson’s nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things (2015), When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012), Absence of Mind (2010), The Death of Adam (1998), and Mother Country (1989). She is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” Robinson lives in California.

Photo Credit: Alec Soth / Magnum Photos

Book Reviews and Author Interviews

Information to follow.

Supplemental Resources

Character Listing

  • Rev. John Ames (protagonist)
  • John’s son (the boy)
  • Lila (John’s wife)
  • John’s father (also named Rev. John Ames)
  • John’s grandfather (also named Rev. John Ames)
  • Rev. Robert Boughton (John’s lifelong best friend)
  • Jack (John Ames) Boughton – (Boughton’s son and John’s namesake)
  • Martha Turner Ames (John’s mother)
  • Margaret Todd Ames (John’s grandmother)
  • Louisa (John’s first wife)
  • Edward Ames (John’s older brother)
  • Della Miles (Jack’s wife)

Additional characters

  • Rebecca/Angeline (John and Louisa’s only child)
  • Glory (Boughton’s daughter)
  • Tobias Schmidt (John’s son’s closest friend)
  • Robert Boughton Miles (Jack and Della’s son)

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Additional Information

Information to follow.

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Upcoming Book Discussion

Tuesday, March 17, 2026
7:00 pm (Eastern)

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