Robinson's first novel, Housekeeping (1980), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, is a work of remarkable metaphoric richness, full of American literary allusion. The novel is set in a small western town situated on the edge of a lake and tells the story of three generations of women, coping in various ways with the task of going on despite traumatic losses.

Robinson's The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998) is “contrarian in method and spirit,” as she states in her “Introduction.” Of the included essays, “McGuffey and the Abolitionists” and “Puritans and Prigs” cover topics that surface in Gilead.

Gloria Naylor's novel The Women of Brewster Place (1989) follows the lives of seven women living in Brewster Place, a ghetto housing project in a northern U.S. city. The poignancy of these women's lives and their hopes and challenges clearly...