Description

A Lesson Before Dying, is placed in a little Cajun community in the late 1940s.  Jefferson, a black man, is definitely an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot-out by which three males are killed; the only real survivor, he's convicted of murder and sentenced to death.  Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school to teach.  As he struggles together with his decision whether to remain or escape to a different state, his aunt and Jefferson's godmother persuade him to go to Jefferson in his cell and impart his learning and his delight to Jefferson before his death.  Ultimately, the 2 men forge a bond because they both arrived at understand the easy heroism of resisting—and defying—the expected.Ernest T. Gaines gives to the book the same rich sense of place, the same strong knowledge of the human mind, and the same empathy for a people and their struggle which have unformed his previous, highly-praised works of fiction.