Jack by Marilynne Robinson

The relationship that is at the heart of this book is an unmarriage, forbidden and yet real. Jack Boughton is white to Della Miles black. When the two walk together in St. Louis, they do so at their peril. Each minute they spend together in public is an act of trespass; to be near her, he knows, is to endanger her. Della is a schoolteacher and the daughter of a Methodist bishop; Jack, the son of a Presbyterian minister, is en drunk, and erratically employed. Their marriage cannot, and does not, exist on paper, yet it is the thing that they risk everything for. This unwelcoming world is no surprise to Jack and Della, and Robinson fittingly sets one of their longest scenes together in a cemetery. There is no safe place for them, but there are fewer spectators among the headstones and obelisks than elsewhere; there is also, of course, the stark presence of death. The exploration of racism set in the near past is a quiet reminder of the reality of life in America, a country unwilling to publicly deal with it's history of slavery, and so it simmers below the surface, never going away, never getting better. Like all of Robinson's books that are linked togehter since Gilead, this deals with human bonds. It is quietly stirring, and well worth reading.