NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A deep and compassionate novel about a young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to visit a Black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting. "An instant classic." — Chicago Tribune A “majestic, moving novel...an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives" ( Chicago Tribune), from the critically acclaimed author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. " 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 “A quietly moving novel [that] takes us back to a place we've been before to impart a lesson for living.” — San Francisco Chronicle