For Lamb

Lesa Cline-Ransome


Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars
4.50 · 10 ratings · 304 pages · Published: 10 Jan 2023

For Lamb by Lesa Cline-Ransome
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 Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

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