Wednesday, March 07, 2007
You may disagree, but I think one of the neat things about life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast is that seeing an alligator isn't uncommon. I took the picture above yesterday while driving around Gulf Islands National Seashore in Ocean Springs. This gator is a regular there...--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My friend, Bruno, gave me a book that I finished today, and I couldn't recommend any book more passionately than Ernest J. Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying. I'm too tired right now (and most probably too dense anyway) to provide an adequate book report, but I will print the tease from the back cover for anyone who might be interested. It was published in 1993, and it is a quick read (256 easy-to-turn pages). Try the library, or order it on-line. I simply could not recommend it more highly.
Here's the tease:
A Lesson Before Dying is set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shootout in which three men are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school to teach. As he struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, his aunt and Jefferson's godmother persuade him to visit Jefferson in his cell and impart his learning and his pride to Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting - and defying - the expected.
