Just Finished Reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Gilead, a 2004 novel by Marilynne Robinson that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year, came to my attention after Melissa was assigned to read it for her current class.  The title refers to the fictional small Iowa town of Gilead where John Ames, a third-generation Congregationalist pastor, is in his late seventies and, realizing that his remaining time on Earth is running out due to a recently-diagnosed heart ailment, is writing the narrative as a letter to his seven-year-old son.  In it he reminisces about both his father and grandfather, vastly different personalities with diverging views on what it means to be a Christian.  Grandfather Ames is a fiery warrior who takes up arms supporting abolitionist John Brown in Kansas before the Civil War and then serves the Union cause during that conflict, losing one of his eyes in the process.  John's father, on the other hand, has a serious falling out with the grandfather and turns into a staunchly anti-war pastor during World War I, even tempted once to deliver a sermon describing the raging and deadly flu epidemic of the time that was killing so many young men as a blessing from God that would prevent them from going overseas and committing murder as soldiers.  The author also described how life was in this part of the country during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  His older brother Edward, whom he has always looked up to, becomes an atheist and their relationship tests both his own faith as well as that of his father...John Ames is continually examining his own beliefs as to their veracity instead of blindly adhering to a doctrine etched in stone. The narrative continues as John describes his own tragic first marriage when his wife Louisa dies giving birth to his daughter Rachel...who also dies soon thereafter.  Many years later he remarries, to Lila who is much younger than him and who bears their son in 1949...this narrative letter is set in the year 1956.  That's the general background for the story, but the ultimate focus is his relationship with the "black sheep" prodigal son figure of John "Jack" Ames Boughton, son of his longtime friend and Gilead's Presbyterian pastor who had honored him by giving his newborn son his name.  He is suspicious of Jack's motives for hanging around his family and befriending his son and wife...both men know of Jack's past waywardness on many levels and John feels very uncomfortable and defensive around him.  The relationship takes a turn for the worse when Jack begins to intensely question the pastor's Calvinist theology, especially with regard to the concept of predestination...he can come up with no satisfactory response.  I think, with all the text's postulating on different concepts, that it helps the reader to better understand Gilead if he or she has studied theology, been brought up in a religious family, or served in a pastoral capacity in a church...I struggled a lot with it.  But the historical references, along with the issues of conscience, belief, sacrificial love, and grace emphasized in the story made it worthwhile and it merits my recommendation to others.  Still, that theology stuff...do they really have to make it that complicated?