In Marilynne Robinson’s world of Gilead, this second book, “Home,” fits right into the center of the overarching narrative. Home is where ‘place’ and ‘meaning’ converge in thoughtful reflections and the eternal hope of reconciliation and belonging. Robinson is a master storyteller. She does not display this mastery with pyrotechnic twists and turns in her stories, but with a steady stare right at the thing in the middle of a person. She has the uncanny ability to wrap a body around the soul of her characters and tie the two together. In a straightforward manner she includes the pain, the confusion, and the mystery that combine to make a person. She writes full people, as mysterious to themselves as they are to others. Her characters grow and change without becoming something that they weren’t already at the beginning in one way or another. She takes turns opening up the doors to thoughts that seem not to have answers and situations that seem to never resolve, and in this way, she tells a true story both of people on the scale of the particular and of humans as a whole.

I came to this book out-of-order. “Home” was written as the second book based in Gilead, Iowa, and I read it last. (I also read the third book before reading the first… so pretty much as out of order as I could read them.) I read “Lila” in 2017 and (Pulitzer prize-winning) “Gilead” in 2018. I’ve become a better person after reading each one. Lila’s story gripped me and caused something like water to well up in me and leak out my eyes. Her story of redemption, hope, and love in the midst of a world that is hard and cold is not elaborate or especially revelatory. However, Robinson’s unencumbered prose churns with feeling and connected with me. I believe “Lila” will always be my favorite of her books because it was the first of hers that I read. The letters of John Ames which comprise the book “Gilead” are something like a diary of a life lived. Ames’ careful and witty hand guides readers through the history of the town where he lives, but also through his own personal pain, confusion, and loss. His is a story of hope renewed. Hope in the hands of John Ames is not a hope that is light and airy, but a hope that has been earned through endurance and faith. “Gilead” is a passing of the torch from an old man who has persisted in hope to a young boy who doesn’t yet know he’ll need that hope.

And now we come back to where we started, “Home.” In the middle of this orchard, there is a bad apple, and that apple is Jack. Named for his godfather John Ames (from Gilead), Jack Boughton is the kid who never fit into his own home, let alone his own skin. He’s meticulous in his attentions to politeness and as unobtrusive as he is obstinate. Jack returns home after a twenty-year absence in which his mother has died, and his father has lost nearly all his strength, patience, and hope. Much Like his father, Jack has lived a life at the edges of his own capability to understand and has grown as tired of himself as he is of others – and as others are of him. His long absence sets the foreground for the pain he brings home with him. His sister Glory has also returned to their childhood home to watch after their father and try to rebuild her own broken life. This book conveys the elusive feeling that is created when, despite all efforts, a black sheep leaves the pasture. It paints an equal portrait of how that black sheep feels when it returns to the pasture; still lost, still alone. There are no easy answers in this book. Readers are left with a longing for home. Whatever that might mean.