Reverend John Ames is dying in 1956 in Gilead, Iowa, and he in recording his family's story. Glory Boughton has returned to care for her dying father and soon her brother, Jack, the prodigal son, comes home, too.

Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack--the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years--comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.

Marilynne Robinson's mythical world of Gilead, Iowa -- the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, and Lila, and now Jack -- and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world. Jack is Robinson's fourth novel in this now-classic series. In it, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead's Presbyterian minister, and...

A new essay collection assesses today's political climate and the mysteries of faith, from the influence of intellectual minds on society's political consciousness to the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life.

Since the 1981 publication of Marilynne Robinson's novel, Housekeeping, she has built a sterling reputation not only as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, but also as a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In this new collection she returns to the themes which have preoccupied her work: the role of faith in modern life, the inadequacy of fact, and the contradictions inherent in human nature. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates...