Fathers and Sons 
 Gilead is among the best books I have read in years, luminous and filled with grace. The year is 1956; the setting, Gilead, an isolated town on the Iowa/Kansas border. Knowing that he is dying, John Ames, an old Congregationalist minister, writes a long letter as spiritual legacy for his young son. By the time he is finished, one has come to know him and love him and to cherish his view of a simple but challenging world suffused with the mercy of God. I am no longer a Christian, and have no fondness for the great plains, but Gilead makes me feel with those who see the wonder of both. 
 Early in the book, the minister, John Ames, remarks: "It was one day as I listened to baseball that it occurred to me how the moon actually moves, in a spiral, because while it orbits the earth it also follows the orbit of the earth around the sun. This is obvious, but the realization pleased me. There was a full moon outside my window, icy white in a blue sky, and the Cubs were playing Cincinnati." This paragraph, which I quote here in full, is by no means the most beautiful in the book, but it illustrates the quality of the minister's thought: often abstract ideas described in simple language by a man who, though deeply spiritual, is by no means withdrawn from the world around him. Far from it. 
 This paragraph also provides the key to the way the book is written: in spiral fashion. The first fifty pages or so are virtually plotless, but bracing and seductive at the same time. Images of water and of light, of beauty and of blessing, recur, interweave, echo, and build upon one another. As was the case with Robinson's 
 Housekeeping 
 (1981), one finds oneself reading more and more slowly, going back over paragraph after paragraph to savor its beauty. By the time one has gone a quarter way into the book, one finds oneself seeing through Ames's eyes, and sharing his belief in the existence of God. Unlike the earlier novel, the writing style here totally matches the character and education of the writer. This book is dominated by light rather than by darkness, and its small western town is a symbol of settlement rather than transience. 
 The spiral motion of the book continues throughout, drawing the reader deeper and deeper into Ames's soul and conscience. Gradually a narrative emerges, spanning at least four generations. There is Ames's grandfather, a Civil War veteran and also a preacher, who practices a fierce piratical form of Christianity. There is his father, another minister, who returned from the Great War a pacifist and could no longer see eye to eye with the grandfather. There is Ames's older brother, who went off to study theology in Germany and returned an atheist. There is Ames's first wife who died bearing his first child, and the baby with her. And there is the nine-year-old boy playing with the family cat outside the window, and his mother, Ames's much loved second wife, scarcely half his age. 
 But the relationship which turns out to be most important of all is not about a blood relative, but the child of Ames's best friend, his godson John Ames Boughton, the names given in a gesture of friendship which the older man feels to be a burden as much as a compliment. For Jack Boughton turns out to be the black sheep of his family, much loved by his natural father, but a bitter reminder of Ames's own long life of widowerhood and childlessness. When Jack returns and casts his charm over Ames's young family, Ames fears his influence on his wife and son after he is dead and finds it hard to forgive Jack for the sins of his past. His struggles with conscience lead the reader into areas of theology which, alone in the book, can be difficult to follow. But the outcome is grace itself, bringing the spiralling images from the earlier part of the book together in a simple act of blessing. 
 More even than the Turgenev novel of that name, this book is truly about Fathers and Sons, debts and disagreements, transgression and forgiveness, and the miracle of unconditional love. A profoundly human book deeply rooted in everyday life, it is also a work of theology, without preachiness or pretension. For it is impossible to read the tale through Ames's eyes without also respecting his attempts to be worthy of the example of another Father: God's love for his sons in this flawed but still-lovely world of his creation.