Read With Us: Gilead

If you’re in the mood for a book that rewards slow reading, deep thinking, and a little quiet awe, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson is a perfect choice for Read With Us.

Set in a small Iowa town in the 1950s, Gilead takes the form of a long letter written by Reverend John Ames to his young son. Ames is elderly and ill, and what unfolds is not a plot-driven novel so much as a meditation on life: faith, grace, forgiveness, love, regret, and the strange beauty of ordinary days. If that sounds heavy, it can be, but it’s also gentle, luminous, and surprisingly warm. So what are some good reasons for reading this book?

One of the great pleasures of Gilead is Robinson’s language. Her prose is precise and unshowy, yet often breathtaking. She has a gift for making small moments feel sacred: light falling on water, a child’s laughter, a simple walk through town. This is a book that makes you want to pause mid-paragraph just to sit with a sentence for a moment.

This is also a novel about empathy. Even when characters disappoint or frustrate us, Robinson invites us to see them whole, shaped by their pasts and their fears. That generosity of spirit is one of the reasons Gilead has stayed with readers for years and continues to feel relevant.

For discussion purposes, Gilead offers so much to work with. It asks big questions without insisting on easy answers: What do we owe the people we love? How do we live well, knowing we are flawed and finite? What does forgiveness really cost? The relationships, especially between fathers and sons, and between old friends carrying long histories, are nuanced and quietly powerful, leaving plenty of room for interpretation and our discussion.

If you enjoy books that are reflective rather than fast-paced, rich in ideas, and written with extraordinary care, Gilead is well worth your time. It’s the kind of novel that doesn’t shout for your attention, but once you settle into it, it has a way of lingering, quietly, long after you’ve turned the last page.

Kym, Carole, and I will be talking about the book, giving additional information, and doing promotional posts throughout February. Discussion day for Gilead is scheduled for Tuesday, March 17, 2026 at 7:00 pm Eastern time, so mark your calendars. We'll ask questions on our blogs that day and then host the always educational and illuminating Zoom discussion. 

I hope the promise of breathtaking prose, a book full of empathy, and one that I think will be the basis of a rich discussion will make you want to read Gilead. We hope you'll Read With Us and discover this quietly reflective novel.