In his acclaimed novel Silence, Shūsaku Endō questions the viability of the tree of Hellenized Christianity taking root in the “mud swamp” of Japan. What was once hospitable, fertile ground for the seed planted by St. Francis Xavier, becomes the land of a hunted and persecuted Christianity, as depicted in the story of two missionary priests and the community in their care.

The luminous novel Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, takes the form of a book-length epistle from a Congregationalist minister to his seven year old son...