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Old reverend John Ames writes a long farewell letter to his seven-year old son after he is informed of a cardiovascular problem that will eventually take his life.
What starts as a chronicle of his childhood memories and the life stories of his father and grandfather, also pastors, and the ongoing tensions between them about the use of religion to serve their ideals, progressively becomes an introspective, fragmented confession where the old man reveals his soul to the reader, but mostly, to himself.
A person from his past, his namesake, and somehow alter-ego, reappears in this transcendental moment of the minister’s life; right when he is about to lose what he loves most: his much younger wife Lila and his son. The miracles that were sent to him in his golden years are now threatened by a man who seems evil by nature. Ames will have to pass the final test he has preached about in his countless sermons and assimilate the real meaning of love, grace and forgiveness.

With luminous, patient voice, John Ames reveals the nooks and crannies of past griefs, fears and weaknesses, exposed through the filter of his unfaltering faith. Prolonged loneliness, jealousy, covetousness, envy and other corroding emotions nag at the essential goodness of a man confronted with his last days in this world. As his nemesis approaches, Ames will gradually rise up to the son he aspired to be and the father he could have been.

This slowly paced novel, almost philosophical in nature and devoid of plot, told in the first person narrator using the stream of consciousness technique, might be the ultimate parable of the Prodigal Son, revisited by a humble but highly literate reverend in a forsaken village in the bare plains of Iowa, the town of Gilead. Places that cast no allure are likely to be the scenarios for miracles, if the observer notices a certain slant of light, or the moonbeams washing clean the dusty paths in silver streams, or the soft, velvety caress of a voice speaking kindly to us.
Ames� unremarkable life story is also the testimony of the history of a country that witnessed three wars in three generations and the violent genesis between them, between families, between fathers and sons, and the wounds that never healed properly because permanent estrangement settled in for good. At the end, Ames is faced with a very simple question, which, according to the reader’s understanding of a blessing, he might answer fully, or he might elude.

Marilynne Robinson’s prose reads like a prayer. It exudes profound religiosity, but it’s not necessary to be a participant in the Christian doctrines to feel comfortable in its magnanimous embrace. She includes the reader, appeals to every cell of his humanity and leaves several doors open for him to walk out, un-judged and free, but above all, totally and wholly recognized, and therefore, always forgiven.