Lila

American author Marilynne Robinson’s novel Lila (2014), the third part of the Gilead trilogy, focuses on Lila Ames, a young woman who emerges from a childhood on the fringes of society to become the wife of the Reverend John Ames. As she begins a new life as the wife of a respected man, she tries to reconcile her traumatic past with the Christian worldview of her husband. Fusing the story of Lila and John’s life in the present day with flashbacks to her childhood on the run with the young drifter Doll, Lila explores themes of shame, loneliness, abandonment, and the past’s influence on the presence. Critically acclaimed for its in-depth look at a complex character and its further exploration of the culture and characters of the town of Gilead, it is one of Robinson’s most acclaimed books, winning the National Book Award in 2014.

Lila has multiple timelines, beginning with the story of Lila’s childhood and then showing her life in the present day in the town of Gilead, where she’s a minister’s wife. However, her past never quite leaves her, coloring everything she does over the course of her life. As a child, she lives in a Midwestern home for migrant workers where she’s frequently neglected and abused. Her life takes a dramatic turn when she’s kidnapped by a slightly older drifter named Doll and goes on the run. The two of them flee to the cabin of an old woman that Doll knows about, and they live there for a month before falling in with a criminal crew run by Doane and Marcelle. Life on the run is hard and they often want for food and shelter. Struggling to care for Lila, Doll considers returning her to her original home. Doane abandons Lila for four days, leaving her deeply distrustful of everyone around her. They eventually settle in Tammany, Iowa, where Lila goes to school. One of Lila’s family members, possibly her father, comes looking for her and is killed by Doll. Doll is arrested and escapes custody, but is seemingly killed in the escape. Lila seeks help at a woman’s house in St. Louis, but it turns out to be a brothel where she works briefly.

Lila eventually finds work as a housekeeper for several years until she gets a ride to Iowa with a young Christian woman. She stays in an abandoned cabin in the woods and works as a farmhand to get bus money. She takes the bus to the nearby town of Gilead, where she visits the church and runs into the Reverend, John Ames. They slowly develop a friendship, despite John’s shyness and Lila’s hesitancy to trust. As Lila works in his garden, she finds that John lost his wife and stillborn child in childbirth. Although she thinks about moving on, she finds herself drawn to the Reverend Ames. She casually suggests that they should get married, and their friendship deepens. She agrees to be baptized, and a month later they’re married. Although they are happy, they are haunted by their pasts and timid with their lovemaking. Lila slowly becomes more religious and more trusting of her husband. This is hard for her, however, and she consistently finds herself filled with thoughts of fleeing Gilead and her husband before he finds out about her past and throws her out on his own.



Lila learns that she’s pregnant, which increases her worries about how her past will affect her future child. She’s comforted by the fact that the child will inherit many good qualities from John. When she hears about an abandoned boy hiding out in the cabin she used to live in, she goes and meets him, trying to help him. John sees her sneaking off and is worried, convinced that she is planning to leave him. Although she is happy in her marriage, she is still consumed by fears of loneliness, abandonment, and distrust. When her son Robby is born, she finds a new peace in motherhood. Although as years pass, she still occasionally has thoughts of leaving Gilead with Robby and going on the run again, she loves John and realizes that she can’t subject her husband to the abandonment she felt so many times. Lila and the Reverend, although they are both still haunted by their traumatic pasts, find comfort in their mutual loneliness and are satisfied with their lives together.

Marilynne Robinson is a highly acclaimed American novelist and essayist. After making her debut in 1980 with the novel Housekeeping, she did not release her next novel for twenty-four years. The Gilead trilogy was published between 2004 and 2014. She is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, the National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction in 2016. She was a teacher at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop between 1991 and 2016.