Glory Boughton, age thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack, the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years, comes home too, looking for refuge and to try to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain. Jack is a bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father. Yet he remains Reverend Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, beguiling, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with John Ames, his godfather and namesake.

Marilynne Robinson is the author of the modern classic Housekeeping - winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award - and two books of nonfiction. Housekeeping was made into a film directed by Bill Forsyth. Robinson teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.