Catherine Carmier
A Novel

I am always drawn to stories that feature a return to a family or community after a prolonged absence, and Gaines presents a poignant one in Catherine Carmier. Jackson returns not as a fresh faced enthusiastic young man ready to take up the challenge and duty to give to his community what he has rec......more

4.5 easy read easy to visualize. With this being my third consumption of a work by Mr. Gaines, I’m realizing he always includes at least a nugget of a character(s) standing up for their rights and/or against injustice. I’ve also realized over the past few years that this behavior may be an innate pa......more

Jackson has returned to his aunt's home after being gone for over ten years to get an education. She expects him to stay with her again and teach but he has other ideas. His aunt has devoted her time to earning the money to pay for his education and, so, he does not know how he is going to tell her......more

Catherine Carmier was a good book---but not as good as Love and Dust. Of course, that is my personal opinion. It dealt with racial color,romance, and violence. The thing that put me off was the characters' communication "with their eyes". This occurred too many times to seem possible. To say that Catherine......more

I think I first learned of Ernest J Gaines when he died and got a bit of press from that. I hate it when that happens! He was born in 1933 to a sharecropping family. Started picking cotton at the age of 9. At 14, he moved to California where his mother lived and began writing. He attended college, s......more