'A Lesson Before Dying' by Ernest J. Gaines
'My eyes have been closed all my life. Yes, we all need you. Every last one of us.'—Review #249
Donna and I visited a dear friend in the Bay Area in 2023, and, of course, we stopped by the famous City Lights Bookstore. What a marvelous place! I wasn’t looking for any book in particular, but as we browsed, the spine of Ernest J. Gaines’s novel ‘A Lesson Before Dying’ caught my eye. Not that it has a catchy design, it’s pretty nondescript, but I think I was drawn to the word:
I picked it up and read a bit of the back-cover description—the book seemed gripping and important, and I wanted to read it—but I put it back on the shelf and promised myself I would buy a copy when I got back to New York. I was like:
I looked and looked, and it took me a few months to find it.
Here’s the book’s cover:
Jefferson is in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets mixed up in a shootout at a liquor store that leaves three people dead and him on trial for murder. It’s the late 1940s in rural Louisiana where an all-white jury finds Jefferson, a black man from a nearby plantation community, guilty as charged despite there being no evidence connecting him to the crime. He’s sentenced to die by the electric chair. Jefferson’s godmother, Emma, is distraught, not only because of the unjust sentence, but also because the defense attorney argued that Jefferson was innocent because he is no more intelligent than a hog. Emma becomes determined to have her godson’s humanity affirmed so when he faces his fate he’ll be seen—by his executioners and his community alike—as a man and not an animal. She’s like:
Grant Wiggins is the teacher at the plantation’s school and the nephew of Emma’s closest friend. Wiggins grew up on the plantation and went away to college before returning to teach. He feels cynical and bleak about his life from the constant humiliations and limited opportunities he faces in the segregated south. He knows his students will never get the same books, or resources, or chances at a better life that white students get at their schools. And he knows Jefferson didn’t get a fair deal, neither at the trial nor at being born into a life with just two seemingly predetermined outcomes: in the plantation’s sugar cane fields or in its graveyard. Wiggins yearns to escape, and often talks with Vivian, his girlfriend and fellow teacher (at a school in a nearby town), about leaving the plantation forever. But Vivian is tied down by two kids from a previous marriage, and Wiggins is bound by a sense of loyalty to and love for his community that runs deeper than his frequent bouts of despair. But he’s not in touch with those feelings just yet. When he’s asked by Emma and his aunt to visit Jefferson in jail to help transform the imprisoned man, he’s petulant and opposed to the idea. For one thing, he’s not sure how to complete this task. For another, even if he’s successful, what difference would it make? He’s like:
To placate Emma, Wiggins reluctantly agrees to visit Jefferson. Their conversations in the jailhouse are stilted at first, as both men are embittered and demoralized at the reason they’ve been brought together. Subsequent visits are hardly more successful, and with the execution date fast approaching, it’s unclear whether Wiggins will be successful. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I was riveted to find out if the men would part no closer than when they started, or if they would connect, like:
A blurb on its front cover describes ‘A Lesson Before Dying’ as ‘an instant classic’ that ‘will be read, discussed and taught’ far into the future. I hope that’s true, because it is an amazing book. I flew through it. Gaines’s writing is crisp and precise; it’s evocative without extraneous words. It transported me to a specific time and place—I could see it clearly in my mind—not only the close quarters of Jefferson’s cell, or the vast fields of sugar cane outside Wiggins’s schoolhouse, but also the stings of prejudice and the profound yearning felt by the characters. ‘A Lesson Before Dying’ is a moving and powerful book about human dignity and the strength of community, and I’m grateful it caught my eye. I can’t recommend it enough.
An opening excerpt:
I was not there, yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be. Still, I was there. I was there as much as anyone else was there. Either I sat behind my aunt and his godmother or I sat beside them. Both are large women, but his godmother is larger. She is of average height, five four, five five, but weighs nearly two hundred pounds. Once she and my aunt had found their places—two rows behind the table where he sat with his court-appointed attorney—his godmother became as immobile as a great stone or as one of our oak or cypress stumps. She never got up once to get water or go to the bathroom down in the basement. She just sat there staring at the boy’s clean-cropped head where he sat at the front table with his lawyer. Even after he had gone to await the jurors’ verdict, her eyes remained in that one direction. She heard nothing said in the courtroom. Not by the prosecutor, not by the defense attorney, not by my aunt. (Oh, yes, she did hear one word—one word, for sure: “hog.”) It was my aunt whose eyes followed the prosecutor as he moved from one side of the courtroom to the other, pounding his fist into the palm of his hand, pounding the table where his papers lay, pounding the rail that separated the jurors from the rest of the courtroom. It was my aunt who followed his every move, not his godmother. She was not even listening. She had gotten tired of listening. She knew, as we all knew, what the outcome would be. A white man had been killed during a robbery, and though two of the robbers had been killed on the spot, one had been captured, and he, too, would have to die. Though he told them no, he had nothing to do with it, that he was on his way to the White Rabbit Bar and Lounge when Brother and Bear drove up beside him and offered him a ride. After he got into the car , they asked him if he had any money. When he told them he didn’t have a solitary dime, it was then that Brother and Bear started talking credit, saying that old Gropé should not mind crediting them a pint since he knew them well, and he knew that the grinding season was coming soon, and they would be able to pay him back then.
My rating:
‘A Lesson Before Dying’ by Ernest J. Gaines was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1993 and by Vintage Contemporaries in 1994. 256 pages. $14.88 from Bookshop.org.
What’s next:
Before you go:
ICYMI: Review #248
Read this: You absolutely have to read ‘Sarah McNally’s Book Club’ in Vulture about the owner of my favorite bookstores in New York City.
See this: Mandylion Press, publishers of ‘The Gadfly’ by Ethel Lilian Voynich, have announced the next two books they plan to release: ‘The Morgesons’ by Elizabeth Stoddard and ‘One or Two’ by H.D. Everett. The preorders are already up!
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Thanks for reading, and thanks especially to Donna for editing this newsletter!
Until next time,
MPV
Thanks for sharing about “A Lesson Before Dying” by Ernest J. Gaines”.
I read this book first time last year. I don’t know what took me so long, I’m 72…but thank goodness I did. It should be required reading, however we don’t live in that world, especially now. I highly recommend because the message is strong and the writing for me was mesmerizing!
You also had me at dying.