Split the Sky

Lala Russell is fifteen, a gifted cellist, and has social justice fatigue — the exhaustion of being Black in a Texas sundown town where the Confederate flag is a permanent fixture and racism is the weather. She also has the gift of Flashing: premonitions passed down through the women in her family. When a Flash shows her a Black teenager about to be shot by a white homeowner, she faces an impossible question — save one life or use that death to ignite a larger movement that could save many. Arnold uses magical realism to put a name to something rarely addressed in YA: the specific exhaustion of being expected to be a constant activist when you're also just trying to survive and play the cello. Coretta Scott King Honor Book. The most honest YA novel about social justice fatigue ever written.