Lesson Before Dying — Ernest J. Gaines

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