Ernest Gaines was born and raised on the same plantation where his ancestors once labored as slaves. For nearly a century, they had remained in the same corner of rural Louisiana, living in the same cabins as their forebears, worshipping in the same church, and working for the same family that had held them in bondage. Young Ernest left Louisiana as a teenager, but memories of the South haunted him, and he searched the public library for stories that evoked the sights and sounds of his childhood. When he couldn't find them in books, he began to write them himself, and in time he...