Grand, robust, a rich and big novel.
- Alice Walker, The New York Times Book Review
In [Jane Pittman], Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure… . Gaines’s novel brings to mind other great works: The Odyssey, for the way his heroine’s travels manage to summarize the American history of her race, and Huckleberry Finn, for the clarity of [Pittman’s] voice, for her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years and things to find the one true story of it all.
- Newsweek
Miss Jane Pittman. She is one of the most unforgettable heroines in American fiction, a woman whose life has come to symbolize the struggle for freedom, dignity, and justice. Ernest J. Gaines’s now-classic novel - written as an autobiography - spans one hundred years of Miss Jane’s remarkable life, from her childhood as a slave on a Louisiana plantation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. It is a story of courage and survival, history, bigotry, and hope - as seen through the eyes of a woman who lived through it all.
A historical tour de force, a triumph of fiction, Miss Jane’s eloquent narrative brings to life an important story of race in America - and stands as a landmark work for our time.