Central Kansas Library System

Reverend John Ames is dying in 1956 in Gilead, Iowa. Glory Boughton has returned to care for her dying father and soon her brother, Jack, the prodigal son, comes home, too. As the Reverend John Ames approaches the hour of his own death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable family secrets. In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's...