About A Lesson Before Dying

Published: 1993

Honors: National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (1993); Oprah Book Club® selection (September 1997)

A Lesson Before Dying is set in a small rural Louisiana community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shootout in which three men are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school to teach. As he struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, his aunt and Jefferson’s godmother persuade him to visit Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting – and defying – the expected.

Ernest J. Gaines brings to this novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep understanding of the human psyche and the same compassion for a people and their struggle that have informed his previous, highly praised works of fiction.

About the Author:

Ernest J. Gaines was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, near New Roads, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. His previous books include A Gathering of Old Men, In My Father’s House, A Long Day in November, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Bloodline, Of Love and Dust and Catherine Carmier. He divides his time between Pointe Coupee Parish and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he is writer-in-residence.

Critics Comments About the Book:

"This majestic, moving novel is an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond of the rest of our lives." – Chicago Tribune

"Enormously moving … Gaines unerringly evokes the place and time about which he writes." – Los Angeles Times

" ‘A Lesson Before Dying’ reconfirms Ernest J. Gaines’ position as an important American writer." – Boston Globe

"The lesson is valuable and apt, presented in the modest but forceful terms that we have come to expect from Ernest J. Gaines." – Washington Post Book World

"A quietly moving novel [that] takes us back to a place we’ve been before to impart a lesson for living." – San Francisco Chronicle