It is night and the moon is staring down on Lila, a migrant drifter who is one of the loneliest little girls in the world until she is taken under the wings of Doll, the loneliest vagabond in the world. This eccentric woman becomes her surrogate mother. She grows up with her, traveling light, living through hard times after the Crash and through the dust when many farmers had to sell out. Then Lila's life is totally transformed when she is taken in and loved by John Ames, an elderly widower and Congregational minister in the town of Gilead.
This is the third book in a series of novels taking place in Iowa during the 1950s. Marilynne Robinson, who teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for Gilead, which centers around John Ames's letter to his seven-year old son about faith, love, and forgiveness.
That spiritual work of fiction was followed by Home, about the familial clashes of Ames' longtime friend the Rev. Robert Boughton and his son who has returned to Gilead after leaving home 25 years ago. They both learn how difficult it is to do spiritual work in the family where there are large deposits of anger, disappointment, suffering, and revenge.
In Lila, the main challenge of this drifter is to decide whether to stay or to leave once she has married Ames and is pregnant with his child. She is used to being unencumbered by material possessions. She is a loner who relishes solitude and not being at anyone else's beck and call. "I just don't go around trusting people. Don't see the need," she tells Ames.
But slowly, Lila begins to grow more affectionate towards the preacher who loves her. "She did enjoy the sight of him. He looked as if he'd had his share of loneliness, and that was all right. It was the one thing she understood about him. She liked his voice. She liked the way he stood next to her as if there was a pleasure in him for it."
Robinson circles around a handful of spiritual themes that serve as sturdy accompaniments to the main melody of loneliness: the deep delights of reveling in the grace of God, the debilitations and surprises of old age, and the idiosyncratic nature of love between two very different people.
