# Read the first page of Gilead by Marilynne Robinson Read the opening of Gilead by Marilynne Robinson free, no signup. A dying 1950s preacher writes his life story for his young son. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/gilead-marilynne-robinson - Genre: Literary fiction - Year: 2004 - ISBN: 9781443465830 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781443465830&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781443465830 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781443465830 ## The opening I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren't very old, as if that settled it. I told you you might have a very different life from mine, and from the life you've had with me, and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life. And you said, Mama already told me that. And then you said, Don't laugh! Because you thought I was laughing at you. You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother's. It's a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I'm always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I've suffered one of those looks. I will miss them. It seems ridiculous to suppose the dead miss anything. If you're a grown man when you read this-it is my intention for this letter that you will read it then-I'll have been gone a long time. I'll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I'll probably keep it to myself. That seems to be the way of things. I don't know how many times people have asked me what death is like, sometimes when they were only an hour or two from finding out for themselves. Even when I was a very young man, people as old as I am now would ask me, hold on to my hands and look into my eyes with their old milky eyes, as if they knew I knew and they were going to make me tell them. I used to say it was like going home. We have no home in this world, I used to say, and then I'd walk back up the road to this old place and make myself a pot of coffee and a fried-egg sandwich and listen to the radio, when I got one, in the dark as often as not. Do you remember this house? I think you must, a little. I grew up in parsonages. I've lived in this one most of my life, and I've visited in a good many others, because my father's friends and most of our relatives also lived in parsonages. And when I thought about it in those days, which wasn't too often, I thought this was the worst of them all, the draftiest and the dreariest. Well, that was my state of mind at the time. It's a perfectly good old house, but I was all alone in it then. And that made it seem strange to me. I didn't feel very much at home in the world, that was a fact. Now I do. And now they say my heart is failing. The doctor used the term "angina pectoris," which has a theological sound, like misericordia. Well, you expect these things at my age. My father died an old man, but his sisters didn't live very long, really. So I can only be grateful. I do regret that I have almost nothing to leave you and your mother. A few old books no one else would want. I never made any money to speak of, and I never paid any attention to the money I had. It was the furthest thing from my mind that I'd be leaving a wife and child, believe me. ## Books with a similar feel - [Percival Everett by Virgil Russell by Percival Everett](https://uncovered.ink/read/percival-everett-by-virgil-russell-percival-everett.md) - [F. Scott Fitzgerald by F. Scott Fitzgerald](https://uncovered.ink/read/f-scott-fitzgerald-f-scott-fitzgerald.md) - [The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014 by Deborah Blum](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-best-american-science-and-nature-writing-2014-deborah-blum.md) - [Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward](https://uncovered.ink/read/salvage-the-bones-jesmyn-ward.md) - [The Mothers by Brit Bennett](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-mothers-brit-bennett.md) - [My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs by Kazuo Ishiguro](https://uncovered.ink/read/my-twentieth-century-evening-and-other-small-breakthroughs-kazuo-ishiguro.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.