Ernest J Gaines

In his first novel in ten years, Ernest Gaines, the highly acclaimed author of the best-selling The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, brings us a wrenching story of death and identity in a small Cajun Louisiana community in the late 1940s. A young black named Jefferson is a reluctant party in a shoot-out in a liquor store in which the three other men involved are all killed, including the white store owner. Jefferson, the only survivor, is accused...

An affectionate and funny story set in the "black quarter" of a Southern sugar cane plantation in the 1940's and told by a child named Eddie, who watches his mother leave his father over his preoccupation with his car, which his father ultimately burns to the ground on the advice of a voodoo woman to get his wife back.

Phillip Martin was a powerful man in the small urban community of St. Adrienne. The minister, a handsome darkbrown-skinned man, just over six feet tall, cut an imposing figure in the pulpit and in his position as leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the parish. When the long-barred doors on his former life begin to strain, his guilty past bursts forth, sending Martin into an emotional whirlwind that threatens to destroy his family, his parish and...

"Ernest J. Gaines's new novella revolves around a courthouse shooting that leads a young reporter to uncover the long story of race and power in his small town and the relationship between the white sheriff and the black man who "whipped children" to keep order. After Brady Sims pulls out a gun in a courtroom and shoots his own son, who has just been convicted of robbery and murder, he asks only to be allowed two hours before he'll give himself up...

A frustrated teacher in a southern town, whose education is being underutilized, finds his own purpose in helping bring meaning to the last days of a young man due to be executed. In teaching one person to die with dignity, he redeems himself.

The history of blacks in the South as seen through the eyes of a 110-year-old former slave. Based on the novel by Ernest J. Gaines.