A Kestrel for a Knave

Blurb

A Kestrel for a Knave is a novel by British author Barry Hines, published in 1968. It is set in a mining area and tells of Billy Casper, a young working class boy troubled at home and at school, who only finds solace when he finds and trains a kestrel whom he names "Kes".
The book was made into a film Kes and is often used in Key Stage 4 assessment in the United Kingdom, as part of GCSE English courses. The book is so named because of a poem found in the Boke of St Albans. In medieval England, the only bird a knave was legally allowed to keep was a kestrel.
Although considered a classic and widely taught in schools, A Kestrel for a Knave remained unpublished in the United States until 2015.