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. 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. Gaines introduces us to this world through the eyes of guileless children and wizened jailbirds black tenants and white planters. He shows his characters eking out a living and making love breaking apart aand coming together. And on every page he captures the soul of black community whose circumstances make even the slightest assertion of self-respect an act of majestic--and sometimes suicidal--heroism. Bloodline is a miracle of storytelling. STORIES INCLUDE: A Long Day in November The Sky Is Gray Three Men Bloodline Just Like a Tree