title: Searching for Gilead
author: Hallman, David G.
description: Searching for Gilead
   is a chronicle of love, laughter, and loss. Over the span of three and a half decades, the members of the Compton and Fischer families have seen the world change, both in and out of their homes. Linked initially by the love affair of two of the sons, Jonathan and Tom, the families' relationships evolve into an intriguing web. The novel traces the connections between the two families over three and a half decades. Like many families, not everything is as it seems on the surface. Relationships among the family members brought together by the young men's love are tested over differing perspectives on bigger issues, such as the place of religion in people's lives and in the world, injustice in global affairs, the joy and pain of love, threats to the environment, the role of the arts, and, ultimately, that most human of experiences, the death of loved ones. Witty, comical, poignant, and shocking by turns, the story traverses the globe from Toronto to Venice, from New York to Nairobi, and from Geneva to Marrakech. In the end, the journeys of these people, as individuals and as a family, go beyond the simply geographic.