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 TribuneA "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
Author: Ernest J. Gaines
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 09/28/1997
Series: Vintage Contemporaries
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.20w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780375702709
Accelerated Reader:Reading Level: 4.4
Point Value: 11
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 10287 / Lesson Before Dying
Award: 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award Winner - Fiction
About the AuthorERNEST GAINES was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupée Parish near New Roads, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. He is writer-in-residence emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 1993 Gaines received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his lifetime achievements. In 1996 he was named a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France's highest decorations. He and his wife, Dianne, live in Oscar, Louisiana.