The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lila (a 2014 National Book Award finalist) on the benefits of loneliness, how characters come to her, and the most important advice she gives to aspiring writers.
In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War", then, at age 50, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle.
Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father, an ardent pacifist, and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.
This is also the tale of another remarkable vision, not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.
Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by one of our finest writers, a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.
A Macmillan Audio production.
In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War", then, at age 50, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle.
Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father, an ardent pacifist, and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.
This is also the tale of another remarkable vision, not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.
Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by one of our finest writers, a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.
A Macmillan Audio production.
Product Details
BN ID: | 2940171777524 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Macmillan Audio |
Publication date: | 02/12/2021 |
Series: | Gilead , #1 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
Related Subjects
- Awards
- Fiction
- Literature
- American Fiction
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Fiction Subjects
- 21st Century American Fiction
- Occupations - Fiction
- Family & Friendship - Fiction
- Literary Styles & Movements - Fiction
- Literary Fiction
- Historical Fiction
- Politics & Social Issues - Fiction
- Clergy & Religious - Fiction
- Fathers & Sons - Fiction
- Fiction - Other
- Literary Fiction - Other
- Multigenerational Sagas
- Slavery - Fiction
- Awadhi dialect->Verb
- Chaucer, Geoffrey (-1400)->Miller's tale
- Soils->Scotland->Girvan region
- 2001-2010->Fiction->Pulitzer Prize
- 2005 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalists
- Christian Science Monitor's Best Fiction of 2004
- Fiction->National Book Critics Circle Award Winners
- New York Times 10 Best Books of 2004
- New York Times Notable Fiction & Poetry of 2004
- Newsweek's Best Fiction of 2004
- Publishers Weekly's Best Fiction of 2004
- Time Magazine's Best Fiction of 2004