In these Five stories, Ernest Gaines returns to the cane fields, sharecroppers\' shacks, and decaying plantation houses of Louisiana, the terrain of his great novels A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying .
Gaines introduces us to this world through the eyes of guileless children and wizened jailbirds,.
As rendered by Gaines, this country becomes as familiar, and as haunted by cruelty, suffering, and courage, as Ralph Ellison\'s Harlem or Faulkner\'s Yoknapatawpha County.
In these Five stories, Ernest Gaines returns to the cane fields, sharecroppers\' shacks, and decaying plantation houses of Louisiana, the terrain of his great novels A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying