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一封父親寫給兒子最長的信，刻寫兩個家族、三個世代以來的恐懼、憤怒、諒解與希望。
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76歲的老牧師約翰‧伊姆斯即將告別人世，而他尚年幼的稚子只有六歲，世代居住於基列(Gilead)小鎮，老約翰遙想起過去祖父、父親那兩代人的故事，從當初來到這片荒涼之地的艱辛、開墾的困難與重重阻礙，歷經混亂慘烈的美國南北戰爭、廢奴運動、天災、美國經濟大蕭條和兩次世界大戰，三代人的矛盾、糾葛和總是失敗的父子關係，伴隨著美國歷史回望家族的變遷，老約翰於是提筆寫下給兒子的信，記錄這段漫長且動盪的日子。
寫信的同時，一個離家多年的浪蕩子回到鎮上，鮑頓家和伊姆斯是至交，但傑克‧伊姆斯‧鮑頓卻傷透了兩家人的心，他的歸來讓老約翰再次回想起過去的傷痛，也打亂了基列小鎮平靜的生活...
基列(Gilead)原為聖經裡的地名，約略位置於約旦河東雅博溪谷向南北伸延的山區，約書亞依照摩西的指示把此地分給迦得人、流便人、瑪拿西半支派的人，境內多丘陵，林木茂盛，生產香料及乳香、沒藥等，是富饒之地，作者瑪莉蓮‧羅賓森取其名改寫為美國鄉間小鎮，寫下三代的家族史詩。
創傷是否能平復？存在於世代間的憎恨與疏離，能否以睿智、慈悲的心去化解？瑪莉蓮‧羅賓森藉由老約翰的書寫省思，寫出家族的衝突與歧異、面對生命的打擊和磨難、最終仍然透過愛的諒解與寬恕而獲得救贖，看見新的希望。
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, GILEAD is a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.
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.
