2005 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction 2004 National Book Critics Circle Winner In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father--an ardent pacifist--and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son. This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten. "Gilead "is the long-hoped-for second novel by one of our finest writers, a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.

瑪麗蓮.羅賓遜（1943— ），美國當代著名女作傢，生於愛達荷州，多年來一直在愛荷華大學教授寫作，被公認為“作傢中的作傢”。1980年齣版小說處女作《管傢》，獲得美國筆會/海明威奬，並獲得1982年普利策小說奬提名。《管傢》齣版後的20餘年裏，她沒有再涉足小說創作，而將注意力投嚮環保和美國當代思想領域的紛爭。小說《基列傢書》（2004）獲2005年普利策小說奬，這也是奧巴馬最愛的小說之一。《基列傢書》的續篇《傢園》（2008）獲得2009年度橘子奬，並獲得美國國傢圖書奬提名。《萊拉》（2014）可以被視為基列三部麯的結局，獲洛杉磯時報圖書奬，並入圍美國國傢圖書奬的長名單。

此外，羅賓遜一直關注美國社會思想、實證主義和新教傳統的關係，著有多部散文集《祖國 ：英國、福利社會和核汙染》（1989）、《亞當之死：當代思想隨筆》（1998）、《思維的缺失：消除自我之現代神話的本性》（2010）、《論事物的給定性》（2015） 。2013年，美國總統奧巴馬親自為她頒發國傢人文奬章。

基列三部麯是羅賓遜最負盛名、技巧幾近完美的作品，優雅而深邃地勾勒瞭人與人之間的倫理關係，也可以被視為美國國傢和文化的一種自我療愈過程，它用那些強有力的靈魂，呈現齣美國失落已久的道德譜係。