In My Father's House

by Ernest J. Gaines

Book Overview

A compelling novel of a man brought to reckon with his buried past...

In St. Adrienne, a small black community in Louisiana, Reverend Phillip Martin--a respected minister and civil rights leader--comes face to face with the sins of his youth in the person of Robert X, a young, unkempt stranger who arrives in town for a mysterious meeting with the Reverend.

In the confrontation between the two, the young man's secret burden explodes...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679727914
• ISBN13: 9780679727910
• Release Date: June 1992
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Divided Loyalties

In My Father's House / 0-679-72791-4 In My Father's House details the pain of divided loyalties and the guilt of unfulfilled promises. When a local leader for black rights is confronted by the arrival of the son he has never known, he must choose whether to stand by the community he knows and loves or the son that he abandoned. The young man is locked up by the police and the civil rights leader is told, in no uncertain terms, that the only way to save his son is to cancel the upcoming civil rights demonstration. A choice that initially seems easy (he loves his community, but his son is a stranger to him) delves into more complex themes of guilt and resentment (his son is his blood and needs him now more than ever, whereas his community is not kin and can take care of itself). The fact that neither son nor community appreciates the difficulty of this choice (the son is cold to his father, the community unflinchingly demands his loyalty) only serves to heighten his pain and sense of being trapped. The final decision - fight for the community, capitulate for the son, or flee the entire messy situation - weighs heavily on his heart. There are never any easy answers provided to the question: To whom do you owe the most loyalty?

A very interesting book!

I am a female... and I wanted to say that this book showed me the civil war from a perspective I'd never seen before. It wasn't all history like a school book or something; most of it was plot, but it was educational and a lot of fun to read!

Whew!! this book left me reeling

Ernest Gaines is excellent!!!! I first came to read his works because of his book "A Gathering of Old Men" which was a Sunday night movie of the week. Every since then I have been hooked he is magnificent. This book left me breathless. The part where the minister has an attack after coming face to face with his bastard son is some of the most realistic writing I have seen in years. Gaines has a knack for allowing his readers to understand that the past affects every aspect of the future. Nothing is done right or wrong without repercussions. He allows the reader to see that throughout the Reverends life he is always making up for his indiscretions of the past. Gaines allows his readers to understand that the Reverend did not abandon his son out of neglect, he abandoned him because he was young and did not know any better. That is very important to understand about many of our fathers today. Gaines deserves a pulitzer for this book, I didn't like it as good as I liked "A lesson before dying" but it is a very close second behind it. Top notch, realistic, hard-hitting, is the only way to describe this book.