num_pages: 247
description: In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father--an ardent pacifist--and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.
language: English
title: Gilead
titlecomplete: Gilead
characters: John Ames, Jack Boughton, Reverend Robert Boughton
genres: Audiobook, Religion, Historical Fiction, Historical, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Classics, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 107162
places: Gilead, Iowa
series: Gilead
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Ambassador Book Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Rodda Book Award, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Frederic G. Melcher Book Award, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Society of Midland Authors Award
category: Adult Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Grawemeyer Award
category: Religion
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux