A Gathering of Old Men

Set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s, A GATHERING OF OLD MEN is a powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man. "Early in this eloquent novel...a sheriff is summoned to a sugarcane plantation, where he finds one young white woman, about eighteen old black men, and one dead Cajun farmer. The sheriff is sure he knows who killed the Cajun — although each of the men is toting a shotgun, only one of them could hit a barn door — but threats and slaps fail to change their stories. Each one claims guilt, and all but one promise to provoke a riot at the courthouse if the sheriff tries to make an arrest. In the meantime, they wait for a lynch mob that the dead man's father —like his son, a notorious brute —is sure to launch....Before it is over, everyone involved has been surprised by something: the old black men not least of all, by their first taste of power and pride." -THE NEW YORKER Cover illustration by Wendell Minor