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.