Author name: Missy Andrews

I ordered Go Set a Watchman for myself back in February, as excited by the reported “discovery” of Harper Lee’s prequel as the rest of the nation seemed to be. To Kill a Mockingbird stands a beacon of American literature and a guardian of the American Southern identity which it helped to forge. The shadowy figure of Harper Lee, so evocative of her mysterious character Boo Radley, continues to stir the imagination of the public. Is it any wonder that the possibility of another Lee masterpiece stirred the blood of readers who cut their teeth on her original work? We desired the new manuscript like candy… 

I recently read Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Gilead. Robinson’s first person narrator, a character by the name of John Ames, relates the story of his family, three generations of pastor-fathers. In a lengthy letter that reads like a journal, Ames shares this history with his son. Seventy-year-old Ames’s voice reflects his age, at times wandering, at times repeating himself, but always striving to make sense of the troubling dysfunction and beautiful theology bequeathed to him by his forefathers. As I read, I was struck not only by the believability of Ames’s voice, nor the author’s elegant use of imagery and language, but most particularly by the universality of the struggle Robinson depicts between loving fathers and respectful sons…