The Tragedy of Brady Sims, Ernest J. Gaines
The Tragedy of Brady Sims, Ernest J. Gaines
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The Tragedy of Brady Sims

Author: Ernest J. Gaines

Narrator: JD Jackson, Danny Campbell

Unabridged: 2 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/29/2017


Synopsis

A courthouse shooting leads a young reporter to uncover the long story of race and power in his small town and the relationship between the white sheriff and the black man who "whipped children" to keep order—in the final novella by the beloved Ernest J. Gaines.

After Brady Sims pulls out a gun in a courtroom and shoots his own son, who has just been convicted of robbery and murder, he asks only to be allowed two hours before he'll give himself up to the sheriff. When the editor of the local newspaper asks his cub reporter to dig up a "human interest" story about Brady, he heads for the town's barbershop. It is the barbers and the regulars who hang out there who narrate with empathy, sadness, humor, and a profound understanding the life story of Brady Sims—an honorable, just, and unsparing man who with his tough love had been handed the task of keeping the black children of Bayonne, Louisiana in line to protect them from the unjust world in which they lived. And when his own son makes a fateful mistake, it is up to Brady to carry out the necessary reckoning. In the telling, we learn the story of a small southern town, divided by race, and the black community struggling to survive even as many of its inhabitants head off northwards during the Great Migration.


About Ernest J. Gaines

Ernest J. Gaines is a writer-in-residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His 1993 novel, A Lesson before Dying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and was an Oprah Book Club pick in 1997. In 2004, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tim

Brady Sims' son has just been sentenced to the electric chair, but he never makes it. As he's being escorted out by his guards, a voice behind them yells "boy" and as they turn around he's shot. The shooter is Brady Sims himself. He tells them to come for him in two hours and he'll gladly give himse......more

The Tragedy of Brady Sims is a perfect example of why I love Ernest Gaines' writing. Mr. Gaines wastes no time throwing his readers into a surprisingly calm yet violent situation that results from a vow made by Brady Sims. In The Tragedy of Brady Sims, Gaines exposes a tragic consequence for one fam......more

Goodreads review by Sue

The size and form of this story, a novella, did not give it the power I found in A Lesson Before Dying or the festering anger of A Gathering of Old Men. Instead it seems more a story of lingering anguish, glimpsing possibilities but never reaching the goals, i.e. good jobs, a decent house, safety fo......more


Quotes

“A taut and searing tale about race and small-town justice. . . . The history the men recount is, indeed, riveting in its insights into how racism harms everyone, crystallized in Mapes’ heartbroken tribute to his friend: ‘Hell of a man, that Brady Sims.’ Gaines tells a hell of a story.”  —Donna Seaman, Booklist


Awards

  • Hurston/Wright Legacy Award