PositiveThe Boston GlobeThe letter here attempts what may be literarily impossible, to lay out by way of a modern parable – written in the form of a meditation or confession or sermon – on what it is to live in a state of Christian grace. This is how John Ames views his earthly life … Ames's letter to his son also explores the historical remnants of American slavery...Though the novel offers portraits of two sublime marriages, that of Jack Boughton is compromised by this society's inability – nearly a hundred years after the Civil War – to provide blacks many forms of civil equality: here the right to marry whites.
