Ocean State Libraries

In this new collection of incisive essays, Robinson returns to the themes which have preoccupied her work: the role of faith in modern life, the inadequacy of fact, the contradictions inherent in human nature.

Since the 1981 publication of Marilynne Robinson's novel, Housekeeping, she has built a sterling reputation not only as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, but also as a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In this new collection she returns to the themes which have preoccupied her work: the role of faith in modern life, the inadequacy of fact, and the contradictions inherent in human nature. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates...

"In 1798, members of the United Irishmen were massacred by the British amid the crumbling walls of a half-built town near Waterford in Ireland. Many of the Irish were republicans inspired by the French Revolution, and the site of their demise was known as Genevan Barracks. The Barracks were the remnants of an experimental community called New Geneva, a settlement of Calvinist republican rebels who fled the continent in 1782. The British believed that...