Holes by Louis Sachar

Camp Green Lake is a boys juvenile detention center in Texas. But there is no lake there. The boys spend each day digging five foot holes in the dried up lake bed. Stanley Yelnats, (yelnats is actuly spelt Stanley backwards) a boy who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is sent there for stealing a pair of used sneakers that had belonged to a famous baseball player. The sneakers had actually fallen from an overpass and landed on top of Stanley’s head. Stanley believes his bad luck is because of a curse placed on his family after his great great grandfather, Elya Yelnats, stole a pig from a gypsy, Madame Zeroni.

When Elya Yelnats was fifteen he was in love with an empty headed girl. Madame Zeroni gave Elya a piglet to raise so that he could win the girl’s hand by gifting her father with a fatted pig. In return, Elya promised to carry Madame Zeroni up a mountain to drink “where the water runs uphill”. When the girl chooses not to marry Elya, he is so distraught that he catches a boat to America, forgetting his promise to Madame Zeroni. The Yelnats family has had bad luck ever since.

At Camp Green Lake Stanley is given the nickname “Caveman”, this shows that for the first time in his life, Stanley has some acceptance from a peer group. He grows stronger and tougher as he battles the harsh conditions at the camp, digging in the desert heat. He becomes friends with a boy called Zero by agreeing to teach him how to read in exchange for help digging. This upsets the other boys and causes a fight. In the aftermath, Zero hits a counselor with a shovel and runs away into the desert. It is guessed that Zero will die out there and no one will care. His records are destroyed.

Deciding to help his friend, Stanley steals a water truck and goes out after Zero. He drives the truck into a hole, gets out of the truck and runs away. He heads out across the desert toward a rock that looks like “God’s thumb,” the place where his grandfather, the first Stanley Yelnats, survived after being robbed by Kissin’ Kate Barlow.

One hundred and ten years before Green Lake was a beautiful place where Katherine Barlow taught school. She fell in love with Sam, the onion man who sold onions as food and medicine in the town.