“I, John Ames, was born in the Year of our Lord 1880 ...  .  At this writing I have lived 76 years, 74 of them here in Gilead, Iowa, excepting study at the college and seminary. And what else should I tell you?”

This beautiful story is a long letter from an ailing minister to his 7-year-old son. Rev. Ames records details silly and sad of a minister’s daily life to be read when the son becomes a man. Underneath this extended letter, Ames grapples with the great questions: Will I be remembered? Will my child want to know how I spent my days on this earth? Did my life and work make a difference to anyone?

But this is no mere philosophical essay. Drama and conflict abound. The son of a neighboring minister begins to visit the parsonage with increasing frequency. Ames is convinced the visits and theological discussions are motivated by another attraction.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, leaves the patient reader with a surprise twist and one of the best last lines of any novel I can recall.  This year’s winner of both the National Book Critics Award prize for fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Gilead is a beautifully crafted, deeply spiritual story.

Excerpt from Gilead:

You (the minister’s son) and Tobias are hopping around in the sprinkler.  The sprinkler is magnificent because it exposes raindrops to sunshine. That does occur in nature, but it is rare. When I was in seminary I used to go sometimes to watch the Baptists down at the river. It was something to see the preacher lifting the one who was being baptized up out of the water and the water pouring off the garments and the hair.  It did look like a birth or a resurrection. For us the water just heightens the touch of the pastor’s hand on the sweet bones of the head, sort of like making an electrical connection. I’ve always loved to baptize people, though I have sometimes wished there were more shimmer and splash involved in the way we go about it. Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.