His most celebrated novel is The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.

A Gathering is a remarkable mystery about a young white woman and 17 old black men in an isolated Louisiana parish, each of whom confess to the murder of a brutal Cajun farmer and who shoot their 12-gauge shotguns and bring them to the scene of the murder to prove their guilt.

After a submissive lifetime of just keeping out of trouble, even at the cost of losing their dignity, these old men now want to do something worthwhile with their lives.

Gaines' novel is all dialogue, presented through the voices of these individuals. The author, who grew up in Louisiana and now teaches literature there, portrays the language of these men accurately and lovingly.

The acts of the men, whose grandparents were slaves, bridges the generations from the old South to the new. It also hints at the difficu

And we went to school separately. And to church separately. When George passed on, Daddy went to his funeral and sat on the back pew. Later on, I thought that was somewhat ironic.

I thought of this as I read A Gathering of Old Men. I thought of growing up on a farm in the deep South. There were perhaps 15 tenants on the place in two small houses. As children, black or white, we played together. We took off our clothes, every stitch, and went swimming in Tosity Creek and caught catfish in the creek and cut whistles from hickory sticks.

I recall a sitcom of the Sixties in which the main character who worked on the floor in his industry was promoted to supervisor. He lost his friends and his peace and soon returned happily to his old job.

By October 10 we were selling ripe tomatoes in every grocery we could find at 10 cents a pound. We made $7.70 on the 10th, $6.75 on the 11th, and so forth into November. We made a profit and to this day those were the best tasting we ever grew.

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