Twenty-four years after her first novel, Housekeeping , Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America s heart. Writing in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Marilynne Robinson s beautiful, spare, and spiritual prose allows "even the faithless reader to feel the possibility of transcendent order" ( Slate ). In the luminous and unforgettable voice of Congregationalist minister John Ames, Gilead reveals the human condition and the often unbearable beauty of an ordinary life.