The novel's eponymous protagonist is Jack Boughton, Reverend Boughton's prodigal son. But in Jack, Robinson meets racial inequality head-on. Robinson uses their discomfort to set race up as a topic the inhabitants of Gilead orbit at a distance, fearing to touch - not unlike many white Americans today. Though Ames takes some pride in this heritage, neither he nor Boughton is fully able to extend their understanding of grace to Black Americans. The Gilead books are set in the 1950s, with retrospect ranging back to the Civil War, in which Ames's abolitionist grandfather served. Reverends Ames and Boughton believe in this preciousness, but are uncomfortable with its political implications. Robinson describes herself as a liberal Protestant, and her deep investment in her characters reflects an immense preoccupation with the concept of grace, which, in Robinson's theological estimation, seems to confer total, unearned preciousness on every human life. Robinson's three subsequent novels - Home, Lila, and, most recently, Jack, all as transcendently lovely as the first - return to Gilead's world, characters, and plot points, retelling and re-examining each one with lapidary care. Marilynne Robinson created the Boughton and Ames families of Gilead, Iowa in her 2004 Gilead, a lingeringly beautiful epistolary novel in which the aging Reverend John Ames reflects on his life in a letter to his son.
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