Caitlyn Dlouhy at Atheneum/Dlouhy has acquired Jamaican-born author Desmond Hall‘s debut YA novel, Your Corner Dark, in a preempt.

Set on the unforgiving streets and majestic mountains surrounding Kingston, Jamaica, the novel tells the story of Frankie, an ambitious high school student who has just earned a ticket out with a full ride scholarship to college in the U.S. But when a stray bullet gravely injures his father, Frankie must find a way to earn fast money to pay for his treatment; he falls into a world of crime and violence and has to learn to trust again in order to engineer his own escape.

Publication is set for fall 2020; Faye Bender at the Book Group negotiated the two-book deal for world English rights. (PW Children’s Bookshelf, March 7, 2019)