"This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a witness to the black militancy of the 1960's. In this woman Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure, a woman equipped to stand beside William Faulkner[...]

Ernest J. Gaines is best known for his prize-winning THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN, but OF LOVE AND DUST has equal power and fascination. It zeros in on an explosion in the making between two men, one black and one white, trapped in the vise of Southern back country prejudice. When young Ma[...]

A collection of short fiction and autobiographical essays from the award-winning author of A Lesson Before Dying includes five stories, set in Louisiana, that capture the joys and sorrows of rural Southern life, accompanied by prose works that chronicle his move to California at fifteen, the beginni[...]

In a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, a young black man named Jefferson is an unwilling party to a liquor store shootout in which three men are killed. The only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death.[...]