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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Jack Boughton: one of the main characters in this tale. He is the son of Reverend Boughton and has struggled all his life with sinning.
• Mrs. Ames: The wife of Reverend Ames who enjoys gardening and is not interested in deep discussions.
• Mama: Mrs. Boughton -- wife of Reverend Boughton and mother to eight children. When this story takes place, she has already passed away.
• Robby: Mrs. and Reverend Ames' son who enjoys baseball. Jack befriends him.
• Della: Jack's correspondent and the woman he is trying to reach.
• Papa: Reverend Boughton -- one of the main characters of this story. He is a religious man who tries to come to terms with his son.
• Teddy: Jack's brother who is closest in age to him. He is a doctor now. In his younger years, he spent much of his time caring for his brother.
• Robert: Jack's son
• Hope: daughter of Reverend and Mrs. Boughton
• Tobias: friend of Robby's who plays baseball with him
• Grace: Daughter of Reverend and Mrs. Ames
• Luke: Son of Reverend and Mrs. Ames
• Dan: Add a description of this character.
• Gracie

Quotes edit see section history

• “Well Jack, i just found out that I will inherit this house. I never meant to stay in Gilead. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but Iam...horrified is too strong a word. Jack...It's a pretty decent house. Free and clear. You could do worse.GloryThis is a nightmare I've had had a hundred times. The one where you all go off and begin your lives and I am left in an empty house full of ridiculous furniture and unreadable books waiting for someone to notice I am missing and come back for me. And nobody does.”

  Glory, 38 year old female caregiver and Jack, the prodigal son

• “When Papa's gone they'll come back here twice a year or once a year or never, and they'll all want it to be the same.”

  Glory

• “I think hopeis the worst thing in the world. I really do. It makes a fool of you while it lasts. And then when it's gone, it's like there's nothing left of you at all. Except what you can't be rid of.”

  Jack

• “Though I've learned that nothing also has charms.It's more nuanced than 'return to sender,' for example.”

  Jack

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding.

  Highlighted by 114 Kindle customers

• If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace.

  Highlighted by 108 Kindle customers

• Experience had taught them that truth had sharp edges and hard corners, and could be seriously at odds with kindness.

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• God does not need our worship. We worship to enlarge our sense of the holy, so that we can feel and know the presence of the Lord, who is with us always. He said, Love is what it amounts to, a loftier love, and pleasure in a loving presence.

  Highlighted by 68 Kindle customers

• Weary or bitter or bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home.

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• As a matter of courtesy they treated one another's deceptions like truth, which was a different thing from deceiving or being deceived. In fact, it was a great part of the fabric of mutual understanding that made their family close.

  Highlighted by 43 Kindle customers

• 'It is possible to know the great truths without feeling the truth of them. That's where the problem lies. In my case.'

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• Home. What kinder place could there be on earth, and why did it seem to them all like exile? Oh, to be passing anonymously through an impersonal landscape! Oh, not to know every stump and stone, not to remember how the fields of Queen Anne's lace figured in the childish happiness they had offered to their father's hopes, God bless him.

  Highlighted by 33 Kindle customers

• That odd capacity for destitution, as if by nature we ought to have so much more than nature gives us. As if we are shockingly unclothed when we lack the complacencies of ordinary life. In destitution, even of feeling or purpose, a human being is more hauntingly human and vulnerable to kindnesses because there is the sense that things should be otherwise, and then the thought of what is wanting and what alleviation would be, and how the soul could be put at ease, restored. At home. But the soul finds its own home if it ever has a home at all.

  Highlighted by 32 Kindle customers

• Jack said, 'I think hope is the worst thing in the world. I really do. It makes a fool of you while it lasts. And then when it's gone, it's like there's nothing left of you at all. Except'—he shrugged and laughed—'except what you can't be rid of.'

  Highlighted by 32 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• St. Louis
• Memphis
• Lila
• Minneapolis
• Edinburgh

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Marilynne Robinson (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Lynn Buckley (Designer) - Cover Design
2. Trevillion (Photographer) - Cover Photo
3. Jonathan D Lippincott (Designer) - Book Design

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2008: Fiction)
• Orange Prize for Fiction (2009)
• International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (Finalist, 2010, Shortlist)
• National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist, 2008: Fiction)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.54

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary