A Time for Courage

A Time for Courage is a historical novel for young readers by the American writer Kathryn Lasky, published in 2002. It is written in the form of a diary kept by a girl called Kathleen Bowen.

The book covers the period in 1917 when the campaign for women's suffrage in the United States was at its most intense. Kat's mother, her sister and many of the people close to her are involved in organising for the vote, and through them Kat is drawn into the work herself. Her diary entry for 19 January 1917 describes a picket line that has been going on for more than a week, in weather that people predicted would end it within a day, and records that the protest is drawing women from across the district and from as far away as Maryland and Virginia. President Wilson, moved by the cold, invited the picketers in for coffee and they refused, saying they would come in only to talk about a federal amendment giving women the vote.

The book belongs to a series of historical diaries for young readers, each of them set at a different moment in American history.