NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A deep and compassionate novel about a young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to visit a Black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.
"An instant classic." —
Chicago Tribune
A “majestic, moving novel...an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives" (
Chicago Tribune),
from the critically acclaimed author of
A Gathering of Old Men
and
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
"
A Lesson Before Dying
reconfirms Ernest J. Gaines's position as an important American writer.
" —Boston Globe
Enormously moving.... Gaines unerringly evokes the place and time about which he writes
." —Los Angeles Times
“A quietly moving novel [that] takes us back to a place we've been before to impart a lesson for living.” —
San Francisco Chronicle