A Gathering of Old Men

Name: A Gathering of Old Men
Brand: Recorded Books
Availability: InStock
Author: Ernest J. Gaines
ISBN: 9781428199064

Author: Ernest J. Gaines

Narrator: Graham Brown, Mark Hammer, Tom Stechschulte, Sally Darling, Michelle-Denise Woods, Peter Francis James, Murphy Guyer

Unabridged: 7 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 04/25/2008

Categories: Fiction, African American & Black Fiction

Synopsis

Stirring, heroic, and wonderfully laced with the musical languages of the Bayou, A Gathering of Old Men is a breathtaking saga from Ernest J. Gaines—the foremost voice in contemporary African-American literature. When Sheriff Mapes is summoned to a sugarcane plantation, he finds a dead Cajun farmer. He knows who committed the crime, but Mapes finds himself powerless when nearly 20 elderly black men confess to the murder. Can justice be served, or will the dead man’s brutish father pass judgment his way? Building to a climax that is as stunning as it is inevitable, A Gathering of Old Men powerfully describes the racial tensions in 1970s Louisiana. This insightful novel takes its place among Gaines’ thought-provoking classics, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and In My Father’s House.

About Ernest J. Gaines

Ernest J. Gaines is a writer-in-residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His 1993 novel, A Lesson before Dying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and was an Oprah Book Club pick in 1997. In 2004, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on December 18, 2020

I very much enjoyed this author’s A Lesson Before Dying. (I thought it was classic quality). Gathering is a good story, although not as strong. We’re in Louisiana in the 1970’s. A white man has been killed in a rural African American neighborhood. By the time the sheriff arrives at the scene he finds......more

Goodreads review by Lawyer on September 25, 2017

A Gathering of Old Men: The Way It Used to Be I selected A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines as the Moderator's Choice for September, 2017, for On the Southern Literary Trail. This is the fourth book by Professor Gaines to be read by "The Trail." Come join us. All but one of Ernest J. Gaines' wo......more

Goodreads review by Camie on August 28, 2017

Wow, here's a simply written book that packs one walloping punch. Written in 1983 by Ernest J Gaines, this book which won high acclaim as the best novel about racial tension in that decade, still rings all too true today. Read ( slightly ahead) for On The Southern Literary Trail-Sept. 5 stars......more

Goodreads review by Book Concierge on August 07, 2021

A dead man. A running tractor. A white woman who claims she shot him. A gathering of old men with shotguns. A sheriff who knows everyone is lying. A father who needs revenge. What is so marvelous about this work is that Gaines tells it from a variety of viewpoints, as different characters narrate ch......more