Lila

Marilynne Robinson returns to the Iowa town of Gilead in her fourth novel, the third in the series after Gilead and Home. As a neglected toddler, Lila was taken in by Doll, a resourceful young drifter, and the two lived on the run, getting by from hand to mouth with only each other and a knife for protection. Years later, homeless and alone, Lila shelters from the rain in a small-town church and begins a courtship with John Ames, a minister, whom she marries. In her new life she struggles to square her hard past with her husband's gentle Christian outlook, which seems to judge the people she loved. In 2014 it took the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Corning chief executive Wendell P. Weeks named it in a What CEOs are reading roundup.