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.<br/><br/>"An instant classic." —Chicago Tribune<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>"A Lesson Before Dying reconfirms Ernest J. Gaines's position as an important American writer." —Boston Globe<br/><br/>"Enormously moving.... Gaines unerringly evokes the place and time about which he writes." —Los Angeles Times<br/><br/>“A quietly moving novel [that] takes us back to a place we've been before to impart a lesson for living.” —San Francisco Chronicle