A Lesson Before Dying

Louisiana, the 1940s. Jefferson, a young Black field worker with no schooling, is at the scene of a robbery that goes wrong. He is convicted of a murder he did not commit and sentenced to death.

At the trial his own lawyer argues that Jefferson is too dim to have planned anything, and likens him to a hog bound for slaughter. Jefferson takes the insult to heart as his execution date draws closer.

His godmother, Miss Emma, wants him to die with dignity. She asks Grant Wiggins, the educated and bitter Black teacher at the plantation school, to visit Jefferson and help him see himself as a man, not the animal the courtroom made of him. Grant takes on the task reluctantly.

The novel is a work of literary fiction about Jim Crow injustice. It is a slow, serious book, built around visits and conversations rather than action. As the visits continue, each man is forced to look hard at himself: Grant at his own despair, Jefferson at what he can still be in the time he has left. The mood is sombre and the outcome is signalled from the start.