A Lesson Before Dying (Serpent's Tail Classics)

Review Gaines has created a powerful and loving portrait of a small, mainly cane-cutting community ... A transcendent and heartfelt novel of redemption ― GuardianThis is a fine and decent book that lives in the memory for its elegance and sadness ... like the best country songs, straight and true, unafraid of sentiment and written for the people it depicts, not simply about them ― IndependentA narrative of the deep pain of the south... Gaines writes from the blues and his novel has redemptive power ― Morning StarGaines has written a novel that is not only never maudlin, but approaches the spare beauty of a classic ― KirkusThis majestic, moving novel is an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives. ― Chicago TribuneA Lesson Before Dying reconfirms Ernest J. Gaines's position as an important American writer ― Boston GlobeEnormously moving... Gaines unerringly evokes the place and time about which he writes ― Los Angeles TimesA truly gripping read ― Sunday Herald Published On: 2015-06-14 Product Description An Oprah Book Club selectionWinner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for FictionNominated for a Pulitzer PrizeIn a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, a young black man named Jefferson witnesses a liquor store shootout in which three men are killed. The only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Gaines explores the deep prejudice of the American South in the tradition of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and Toni Morrison's Beloved. A Lesson Before Dying is a richly compassionate and deeply moving novel, the story of a young black man sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit, and a teacher who hopes to ease his burden before the execution. Book Description Award-winning classic novel of prejudice, community and what it means to be a man in the American South. New edition with an introduction by Attica Locke. About the Author Ernest J. Gaines was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. His novels include The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Of Love and Dust, Catherine Carmier, Bloodline, A Gathering of Old Men and In My Father's House.Attica Locke is the author of Bluebird, Bluebird which won the CWA Steel Dagger and an Edgar Award; Pleasantville, which won the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction; Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award and shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and The Cutting Season, a national bestseller and winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. She worked onthe adaptation of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere andAva DuVernay's Netflix series about the Central Park Five, When They See Us. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. GainesLeadtext: I WAS NOT THERE, yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be. Still, I was there. I was there as much as anyone else was there. Either I sat behind my aunt and his godmother or I sat beside them. Both are large women, but his godmother is larger. She is of average height, five four, five five, but weighs nearly two hundred pounds.Once she and my aunt had found their places - two rows behind the table where he sat with his court - appointed attorney - his godmother became as immobile as a great stone or as one of our oak or cypress stumps. She never got up once to get water or go to the bathroom down in the basement. She just sat there staring at the boy's cleancropped head where he sat at the front table with his lawyer.Even after he had gone to await the jurors' verdict, her eyes remained in that one direction. She heard nothing said in