The Avid Reader
617 Second Street
Davis, CA 95616
Tel: (530)758-4040
Fax: (530)758-4084
Open Mon-Sun 10am - 10pm
avidreaderdavis@aol.com
The Avid Reader at the Tower
1600 Broadway
Sacramento, CA 95818
Tel: (916) 441-4400
Fax: (916) 443-1345
Open Sunday-Thursday 9am - 9pm
Friday-Saturday 9am - 10pm
avidreadersac@aol.com
From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.
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 San Francisco and the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette, where he is writer-in-residence.
"This majestic, moving novel is an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives."- Chicago Tribune
"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
