Marilynne Robinson’s book Lila has been selected by the Iowa Center for the Book to be the 2016 “All Iowa Reads” selection.  The purpose of All Iowa Reads is to foster a sense of unity through reading.  Iowans statewide are encouraged to come together in their communities to read and talk about a single book title in the same year.

Although Lila is part of the Gilead trilogy, the novel stands on its own as a powerful story of a woman who, homeless and unschooled, nevertheless leads those around her from “doubt and sorrow” to compassion and understanding. The action in the story takes place before the two earlier works, Gilead and Home. “When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband, the Reverend John Ames, who paradoxically judges those she loves.”

This content has been adapted from the Iowa Center for the Book.