At 'Home' With the Past

"One feels touched with grace just to read it," wrote Michael Dirda in The Washington Post. "Robinson's words have a spiritual force that's very rare in contemporary fiction," wrote James Wood in the New York Times.

Her new book, which last week was named a finalist for the National Book Award, is quietly unusual as well.

Set in precisely the same time and locale as "Gilead," it revisits characters the author found herself unwilling to give up. Yet it is not a sequel. With different people's stories moved to center stage, "Home" manages to be both intertwined with its predecessor and a work that stands alone.

Speaking of unusual: Try to imagine another 21st-century writer beginning a crucial scene in each of two novels by having a character say: "Reverend Ames, I'd like to know your views on the doctrine of predestination."

"I think that's a very thorny problem!" Robinson says, and laughs.

In Christian theology, predestination is the idea -- not universally accepted -- that God has foreordained all human fates, including damnation and salvation. The obvious problem with it is that it undermines the concept of free will. But "the problem with any other construct," as Robinson explains, "is that it limits the power of God."

No easy answers here -- and never mind the difficulty of making compelling fiction out of theological argument.

Which somehow Robinson does.

The Rev. John Ames, a Congregational minister, is the narrator of "Gilead." The word that most easily describes him is "good." The man who asks the predestination question is another matter entirely.

Jack Boughton is the wayward, drunken son of Ames's closest friend. Jack's lifelong alienation from his devout parents and good-citizen siblings, all of whom love him dearly, dominates the narrative in "Home." At the time he asks his question, he has returned after a 20-year absence: worn, guilt-ridden, desperate for redemption.

The question hangs in the air awhile. Bluntly, Jack rephrases it: "My question is, are there people who are simply born evil, live evil lives, and then go to hell?"

"Scripture," Ames says, "is not really clear on that point."