He said this from the pulpit, but he was saying it to Jack, who, to distract him from the parsing of some recent mischief, had almost confided to his father that he had certain doubts about his soul.

You do not have to believe you are good in order to act well in any specific case. So there is good you can do and can always do again. Keeping a promise or breaking it, telling the truth or lying - these things matter to those around you. You are good as a courtesy to everyone around you. His father would say, “You are not good for your own sake. At the same time, his attempts to reach out were sometimes the very thing that pushed Jack away. Through it all, Boughton tried to reach out to his son, even if so much of what he believed suggested his son was lost. Things got really hard when he got a young woman pregnant and then left. Not only was he an atheist, he was a petty thief. Boughton loves Jack, though Jack causes him and the rest of the family a lot of pain. This story begins by focusing on the relationship between Jack and his father, the Reverent John Boughton. Here we finally get a book - and this story - that focuses on Jack’s perspective prior to his return to Gilead. In the first three books, we learn a lot about Jack, the wayward son who comes back to Gilead, seemingly changed. The second I was able to get my hands on a copy I pounced, because I love the world and characters Robinson created in Gilead, Home, and Lila.

“Jack and Della” is an excerpt from Marilynne Robinson’s forthcoming novel Jack, which I finished a week ago thanks to an early copy from FSG. “Jack,” named a Best of 2020 book by numerous media outlets and cited by President Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, is the fourth novel in the cycle and tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister in “Home,” and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the child of a preacher.For the first time in my life (I think), I had a chance to read the fiction published in The New Yorker prior to its publication. The novel returns to the town of Gilead in an unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder. The third book, “Lila,” was a National Book Award Finalist in 2014 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. “Home,” a 2008 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction, takes place concurrently in the same locale as “Gilead,” this time in the household of Rev.

John Ames, who, as his health deteriorates, writes a confessional letter to his only son. The 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Gilead,” Robinson’s first book in the Gilead journey, tells the life story of Rev.

Often described as one of the greatest novelists of our time, Robinson received the National Humanities Medal in 2012.

Gilead home lila jack