: 7 He writes that this is one of the most important pieces of wisdom he can bestow upon his son. John Ames describes his vocation as 'giving you a good basic sense of what is being asked of you and also what you might as well ignore', explaining that your vocation is something both hard to fulfill and hard to obtain. All three men share a vocational lifestyle and profession as Congregationalist ministers in Gilead, Iowa. The book is an account of the memories and legacy of John Ames as he remembers his experiences of his father and grandfather to share with his son. : 9 Ames indicates he was born in 1880 and that, at the time of writing, he is seventy-six years old. At the beginning of the book, the date is established as 1956, and Ames explains that he is writing an account of his life for his seven-year-old son, who will have few memories of him. It comprises the fictional autobiography of the Reverend John Ames, an elderly, white Congregationalist pastor in the small, secluded town of Gilead, Iowa (also fictional), who knows that he is dying of a heart condition. Gilead is an epistolary novel, as the entire narrative is a single, continuing, albeit episodic, document, written on several occasions in a form combining a journal and a memoir.

It is Robinson's second novel, following Housekeeping (1980). It won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Gilead is a novel written by Marilynne Robinson published in 2004.

Gilead robinson