Zee Edgell is a Fawcett Society Book Prize winning author, and received this accolade in 1982 after the publication of Beka Lamb. Not only was it Edgell's first novel to earn international recognition, it was also the first novel by any Belizean author to be lauded on the world stage. It was actually the first novel to be published in Belize at all; previously the country had been known as "British Honduras" and this book was published shortly after Belize gained its independence. The book was originally published as part of the Heinemann Caribbean Writers Series.
The main theme of the book is racial prejudice; at the time of our meeting Beka, she is fourteen years old, and influenced a great deal - not always for the better - by her seventeen-year-old best friend Toycie Qualo. Toycie gets pregnant during her senior year of high school, which is frowned upon in their small, conservative town where the ultra-conservative church dictates the social acceptabilities of the day. She is expelled and confined to the local mental hospital, but dies after a miscarriage.
Beka doesn't take this death well and the novel deals with her search for her own independence, which mirrors that of her country's struggle to assert itself as well. Her parents are determined to tame the wild streak she has developed, and by the end of the book Beka has become what her parents consider a "high minded" person, who has learned the value of values, and treats herself with respect.
The novel cleverly tells the reader about the political struggles in Belize by mirroring them with the struggles of a teen girl, and each political issue, and each of Beka's problems, has its own chapter. There are twenty-six chapters in the novel, and they provide us with a road-map of Belizean political history as well as the story of a troubled but loved young girl.
In 2007, Edgell was made Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), an honor given by the Queen to any Commonwealth citizen, Belize being part of the British Commonwealth of countries. Although an honor, this was also something of an irony given Edgell's pride in the nationalist movement of Belize that had fought for, and gained independence from the British Empire shortly before she published the novel.
