"This is a novel in the guise of the  tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has  lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a  witness to the black militancy of the 1960's. In this  woman Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure,  a woman equipped to stand beside William  Faulkner's Dilsey in <i>The Sound And The  Fury</i>." Miss Jane Pittman, like Dilsey, has  'endured,' has seen almost everything and foretold the  rest. Gaines' novel brings to mind other  great works <i>The Odyssey</i> for the way  his heroine's travels manage to summarize the  American history of her race, and <i>Huckleberry  Finn</i> for the clarity of her voice, for  her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years  and things to find the one true story in it all."  -- Geoffrey Wolff, <i>Newsweek</i>.<br><br>"Stunning. I know of no  black novel about the South  that excludes quite the same refreshing mix of wit  and wrath, imagination and indignation, misery and  poetry. And I can recall no more memorable female  character in Southern fiction since Lena of  Faulkner's <i>Light In August</i> than Miss  Jane Pittman." -- Josh Greenfeld,  <i>Life</i>