Content Warning: This novel contains depictions of death by suicide, mental health conditions, and child abandonment. Characters in the novel engage in stereotypical depictions of nomadic or transient people and unhoused individuals.

Marilynne Robinson’s novels often delve into issues of import to Calvinist Christians. Calvinism is a form of Protestant Christianity that originated with John Calvin in the 16th-century and has undergone various changes over the centuries since his death. As Protestant Christians, Calvinists generally believe that people are justified through faith and not by works. Furthermore, Calvinists believe that Sacred Scripture, or the Bible, is the sole authority on Christianity, as opposed to Roman Catholics, who also rely on tradition as a source of knowledge about God and his teachings.

Two key components of Calvinism are total depravity and predestination. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin describes predestination as:

God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or death (Calvin, John.