Marilynne Robinson

"For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents by various hands, expressing different factional interests, with borrowings from other ancient literatures that mark the text as derivative. In other words, academic interpretation of Genesis has centered on the question of its basic coherency, just as fundamentalist interpretation has centered on the question of the appropriateness of reading it as literally...

Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church -- the only available shelter from the rain -- and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her newfound security. Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and...

Growing up with her younger sister, Lucille, under the care of their grandmother, two great-aunts, and eccentric aunt, Ruth, a young girl struggling to overcome haunting family memories in a town that will not let her forget, gradually grows close to Sylvie, the sister of her dead mother.

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.

In this new collection of incisive essays, Robinson returns to the themes which have preoccupied her work: the role of faith in modern life, the inadequacy of fact, the contradictions inherent in human nature.