Excellent! Second time around for me and just as compelling. Lovely writing.
Enjoy!
( )

Abandoned 43% of the way through. At this point, not much had happened, plot-wise, yet there was profanity, including God's name used in vain, and some sexual content. Not worth finishing. ( )

Wow, another book that wasn’t really in my wheel house but totally blew me away. Very powerful, emotional and well written! Almost felt like satire at first due to the fact that the experiences written about were so foreign from mine own but it evolved into so much more than that, highly recommended. ( )

Protagonist Grant Wiggins is a schoolteacher of poor black children at a church in a small town in Louisiana in 1947. As the story opens, his aunt and her friend, Miss Emma, are attending the trial of Miss Emma’s grandson, Jefferson, for murder. Jefferson was in the wrong place at the wrong time and did not kill the white proprietor, but due to the deep racism of the time and place, the jury presumes he is guilty. He is sentenced to death. Miss Emma asks Grant to visit Jefferson in jail to help him feel a sense of self-respect before he dies.

The story shows the struggles of the black community living in the era of Jim Crow laws and segregation. It brings them to a personal level, showing how difficult it is to live with dignity in the shadow of racism. And of course, this is a lesson our society is still learning. It is easy for the reader to empathize with Grant and Jefferson and develop a sense of outrage at the injustices they face. Grant has no desire to attempt to “teach” moral knowledge, but he does it out of courtesy to his aunt and Miss Emma, and initially there is little response from Jefferson. In the end, they both learn “a lesson before dying.”

Themes include bigotry, poverty, education, injustice, social class, religion, and sacrifice. The tone is mostly bleak, but somehow the author ends it with a tiny ray of hope, and this is no small feat considering the subject matter. It is a powerful and emotional story. ( )

I finished this book and wept. I can't believe it doesn't have better reviews. Yes, the narrator was impossibly whiney, but liking him wasn't important. There are a lot of privileged jerks who are whiney, so it was completely believable to me. He wasn't supposed to be likable any more than the book was supposed to make you feel good. I was exhausted after finishing it. ( )