This is the second novel from one of our favorite authors at Daedalus, and earned both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award (it followed the PEN/Hemingway Award winner Housekeeping, and was itself followed by the Orange Prize winner Home and the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Lila). Gilead is set in 1956, as Reverend John Ames nears his 77th birthday with a diagnosis of heart disease, and so begins a long letter to his seven-year-old son—an account of his life and his forebears.

"So serenely beautiful, and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it."—Washington Post