For Lamb

By Lesa Cline-Ransome

Book Overview

An interracial friendship between two teenaged girls goes tragically wrong in this powerful historical novel set in the Jim Crow South.

For Lamb follows a family striving to better their lives in the late 1930s Jackson, Mississippi. Lamb's mother is a hard-working, creative seamstress who cannot reveal she is a lesbian. Lamb's brother has a brilliant mind and has even earned a college scholarship for a black college up north-- if only he could curb his impulsiveness and rebellious nature.

Lamb herself is a quiet and studious girl. She is also naive. As she tentatively accepts the friendly overtures of a white girl who loans her a book she loves, she sets a off a calamitous series of events that pulls in her mother, charming hustler uncle, estranged father, and brother, and ends in a lynching.

Told with nuance and subtlety, avoiding sensationalism and unnecessary brutality, this young adult novel from celebrated author Lesa Cline-Ransome pays homage to the female victims of white supremacy.

A South Carolina Book Award Nominee
A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
A Horn Book Fanfare Book
A Booklist Editors' Choice
A CSMCL Best Multicultural Children's Book of the Year
A BookPage Best Young Adult Book of the Year
A Bank Street Best Book of the Year - Outstanding Merit
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0823450155
• ISBN13: 9780823450152
• Release Date: January 2023
• Publisher: Holiday House
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher