Gaines has created a powerful and loving portrait of a small, mainly cane-cutting community ... A transcendent and heartfelt novel of redemption Guardian This is a fine and decent book that lives in the memory for its elegance and sadnesss ... like the best country songs, straight and true, unafraid of sentiment and written for the people it depicts, not simply about them Independent A narrative of the deep pain of the south... Gaines writes from the blues and his novel has redemptive power Morning Star Gaines has written a novel that is not only never maudlin, but approaches the spare beauty of a classic Kirkus 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

Ernest J. Gaines was born in 1933 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. He still lives in America.