Based on John’s description, Gilead isn’t much to look at. It’s a tired prairie town with a cluster of houses, schools, a little row of brick buildings with stores, a grain elevator, a water tower, and a weedy old train station, but it is John’s entire world. He cautions that “[y]ou can’t tell so much from the appearance of a place” (132). John finds Gilead’s simplicity almost Christlike, and even compares it to Galilee, where Jesus worked many of his miracles. Through the horrors of the Civil War, World War I, the Spanish flu, the Great Depression, and World War II, Gilead has endured and been home to heroes and saints and martyrs. Though outwardly a little shabby, to John, Gilead still represents hope and home. To Jack, Gilead is a lost home and a misplaced hope.

Historically, Gilead was a mountainous region in ancient Palestine, east of the Jordan River. Gilead is mentioned several times in the bible. In Genesis 31:21, Jacob flees from Laban to the hill country of Gilead. The name itself means “hill of testimony” or “hill of witness.” The soothing “balm of Gilead” was a perfume with curative properties, and the phrase has come to signify a panacea.