InterVarsity Press (IVP) is honored to announce that five of its books have been named finalists for the 2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards. The titles include The Adoptee’s Journey by Cameron Lee Small, Swing Low by Walter R. Strickland II, Beyond Ethnic Loneliness by Prasanta Verma, Our Church Speaks by Ben Lansing and D. J. Marotta, and The New Testament in Color edited by Esau McCaulley, Janette H. Ok, Osvaldo Padilla, and Amy L. B. Peeler.

As part of its mission to discover, review, and share the best books from university and independent publishers, Foreword Magazine hosts an annual awards program each year. Finalists represent the best books published in 2024. The finalists were determined by Foreword’s editorial team, and winners are now being decided by teams of librarian and bookseller judges from across the country. Winners in each genre, along with Editor’s Choice Prize winners and Foreword’s Indie Publisher of the Year, will be announced in June 2025.

IVP books were chosen as finalists in the following categories:

Family & Relationships (Adult Nonfiction)

The Adoptee’s Journey: From Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment

Adoptee and counselor Cameron Lee Small names the realities of the adoptee’s journey, narrating his own and other adoptees’ stories in all their complexity. He unpacks the history of how adoption has worked and names how the church influenced adoption practices with unintended negative impacts on adoptees’ faith. Small’s own tumultuous search for and reunion with his mother in Korea inspired him to help other adoptees navigate what it means to carry multiple stories. His adoptee-centered advocacy helps adoptees regain their agency and identity on a journey of integration and healing, with meaningful relationships in all their family systems.

Haley Radke, creator and host of the Adoptees On podcast, said, “Adopted people have complex origin stories, and Cameron Small diligently walks us through with compassionate lenses to see the intimate inner workings of the adoptee experience. The church has worked hard to sugarcoat the adoption experience, and normally we only get the adoptive parents’ lens; this book is the nurturing table-overturning we need from an adoptee.”

History (Adult Nonfiction)

Swing Low, volume 1: A History of Black Christianity in the United States

The dynamic witness of the Black church in the United States is an essential part of Christian history that must be heard and dependably retold. In this groundbreaking two-volume work, Walter R. Strickland II does just that through a theological-intellectual history highlighting the ways theology has formed and motivated Black Christianity across the centuries. Through his original research he has identified five theological anchors grounding African Americans in Christian orthodoxy: Big God, Jesus, Conversion and walking in the Spirit, the Good Book, and Deliverance. The finalist for the INDIES award, volume 1 tells the story of these themes from the 1600s to the present. Volume 2, a companion anthology, covers the breadth of these historical developments by presenting primary-source documents so we can listen to Black Christianity in its own words.

Mark Noll, author of America’s Book and C. S. Lewis in America, said, “With its focus on Black Protestants, these books are landmarks for the exploration of the nation’s past and its perennial struggles over race. Most of all they record a story that has been regularly neglected in accounts of American Christianity. It is the often unexpected, sometimes contentious, but enduring impact of the Christian gospel throughout African American history.”

Multicultural (Adult Nonfiction)

Beyond Ethnic Loneliness: The Pain of Marginalization and the Path to Belonging

An Indian American immigrant who grew up in white Southern culture, Prasanta Verma names and sheds light on the realities of ethnic loneliness. She unpacks the exhausting effects of cultural isolation, the dynamics of marginalization, and the weight of being other. In the midst of disconnection and erasure, she points to the longing to belong, the need to share our stories, and the hope of finding safe friendships and community.

“Beyond Ethnic Loneliness is a moving read for any person of color who has silently carried the burden of isolation, invisibility, and marginalization in a society that has ‘devalued, attacked, beaten, shot, lynched, enslaved, exiled, killed’ those who do not conform to a ‘white-majority culture,’” said Terence Lester, founder of Love Beyond Walls and author of From Dropout to Doctorate. “Prasanta Verma’s words provide the embrace I never received in spaces where I felt unseen and unheard when discrimination and racism disregarded my racial identity.”

Religion (Adult Nonfiction)

Our Church Speaks: An Illustrated Devotional of Saints from Every Era and Place

This illustrated devotional vividly depicts the lives and words of great women and men of faith. Artist Ben Lansing and Anglican priest D. J. Marotta offer fifty-two profound images and reflections on Christians, from Polycarp in the first century to the martyrs of Sudan in the twenty-first century. These saints, from every continent and century of church history, demonstrate the historic church’s relevance for Christians today and reveals God’s faithfulness in all times and circumstances.

“In a world captivated and mesmerized by the cult of celebrity, this book helps us to reorient our hearts to experience the saints as ones that not only speak to our past but also shine the light and guide the path to our future,” said J.R. Briggs, founder of Kairos Partnerships and author of The Art of Asking Better Questions. “We stand on the shoulders of brothers and sisters in the faith who’ve faithfully shown us the way—and this resource helps make them accessible and relevant to our everyday lives. Our Church Speaks is a useful tool full of stunning artwork and meaningful prayers to help us to sit at the feet of saints young and old and learn from those who are a part of the great cloud of witnesses. For the past few years, I’ve been shaped and formed by these visuals online. I’m thrilled this collection has been published into a book we can now hold in our hands!”

Reference (Adult Nonfiction)

The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary

Edited by Esau McCaulley, Janette Ok, Osvaldo Padilla, and Amy Peeler, this one-volume commentary on the New Testament is written by a multiethnic team of scholars holding orthodox Christian beliefs. Each scholar brings exegetical expertise coupled with a unique interpretive lens to illuminate the ways social location and biblical interpretation work together. Theologically orthodox and multiethnically contextual, The New Testament in Color fills a gap in biblical understanding for both the academy and the church. 

“In my own theological education, I was pressured to suppress my ethnic perspective and experiences, to conform to some sort of disembodied neutrality,” said Nijay Gupta, author of Tell Her Story and professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. “Since then I have come to learn that my background, culture, and reading lens can actually enhance my ability to understand Scripture. I am thrilled to recommend The New Testament in Color because this ‘library-in-a-book’ reflects the beautiful mosaic of a many-colored hermeneutic. I wish someone had handed this book to me twenty-five years ago, and I hope many will read it now.”

For a complete list of IVP award winners visit ivpress.com/award-winners.