A Lesson Before Dying: Review by Dorothy

A Lesson Before Dying

By Ernest J. Gaines

An Anstett Book Club Selection

          I grew up in a small town in Illinois with a population of about 6,000.  Only one family was black, a couple with 3 children.  The daughter was my age, and she had two younger brothers.  They were a nice respectable family who shopped in the same stores as everyone else, not at all like blacks were treated in the South.  Even though Frances was a classmate, I don’t recall having any contact with her, nor did anyone else I knew.  Frances had no close friends that I know of, and she never participated in any school activities.  When the children reached high school, their parents were wise enough to send them to school in Chicago were it was more diverse.  I lost contact with the family after that, but hope they found a better life than the Southern Negro depicted so vividly in this book.

          This book we are now reviewing is about a young black man in the Cajun South of the forties who is unwittingly involved in the robbery and murder of a white storekeeper.  The other two black men who were with him at the time and actually did the crime were both killed, and since he was with them, he was accused of the crime and sent to prison with a death sentence.  Grant Wiggins is a black schoolteacher who is asked to visit the man in prison by his own aunt and the prisoner’s godmother.  He is reluctant to become involved because the prisoner has turned into the animal he is accused of being.  Grant goes on many visits to the prison because of the women, but eventually he realizes how much good he can do this man by bringing him into a peaceful existence in his last days.

          Jefferson ended up dying for the crime, but when I finished the book, I wondered what happened to Grant.  Did he stay in the small town with all its prejudice against Negros, or did he leave for a different life?

          This was an interesting well-written book recommended by Barbara Lechner; Reading such a book, I realized I grew up not knowing how blacks were treated in the South, and makes me sorry I couldn’t have been more of a friend to Frances Kennedy.

Dorothy Anstett