Holes

Read by Will

I have read 3 hours.

I read the book Holes. It tells two stories happening in the same location over a hundred years apart. One story is about a boy who is wrongly sentenced to time at Camp Green Lake, a modern correction facility. The other story is about Kate Barlow. She lives in the town of Green Lake over a century ago, when there was an actual lake.

Stanley, the boy from Camp Green Lake, was arrested for stealing some shoes from a homeless shelter. They were used by a great baseball player and were going to be auctioned off for thousands of dollars.

Stanley was walking home from school when they fell from an overpass onto his head. He had no idea what they were. He thought destiny had struck him and ran with the shoes. A policeman saw him with the recently stolen shoes and arrested him.
At Camp Green Lake, all the campers did was dig holes. For 18 months, they would dig one hole per day, every day of the week. The theory was that if a bad boy digs holes every day in the hot sun, they turn into a good boy.

While Stanley was at camp, he thought about the reason he had such bad luck. He thought of his no good pig stealing great great grandfather, Elya Yelnats. Hundreds of years ago, when Elya was in his 20s, he fell in love with a girl. Now, Elya was a handsome man, but he was in competition with Igor, whom you couldn't say that much of. Of course in those days it wasn't customary for a girl to choose her suitor, so the girl's father decreed that whoever had the largest pig got to marry his daughter. Elya went to Madame Zeroni, a friend of his, and asked for advise. She gave him the runt of her litter and told Elya to take the pig up the mountain where the water runs uphill and let him drink and sing a song. For 20 days he was to do this, and then the pig would be big and fat, and Elya would be big and strong. On the 21st day he was to Madame Zereoni up the hill and sing her the song and let here drink from the stream, or else he and all his descendants would be cursed. Elya brought the pig up the mountain for 19 days, but on the last day he instead brought it to the girl's father. His pig weighed exactly the same as Igor's. Her father decided to let her choose. She came out and was unsure of which to choose. Elya, thinking that she really loved him, stormed off to the docks. He got on a boat for America. Just as they were pulling out, he remembered his promise to Madame Zeroni. He didn't believe in curses, but he felt bad for her.
Stanley had had some bad luck. He might have been cursed, he wouldn't know. His dad was an inventor. Even though he was very smart, he was never very successful. His grandfather was very successful, but lost his fortune to a robbery when he was moving to California. Kissin'

Kate Barlow stole his life savings and left him stranded in the Texas desert. By the time people found him, he was crazy. He said he "Found refuge on God's thumb." He didn't even know what it meant. He married one of the nurses in the hospital and they started their family in Texas.

While Stanley was at camp, he had a feeling that the Warden was looking for something, but he didn't know what. One day Stanley found a mysterious shiny object with the letters KB on it. He and the other campers couldn't figure out what it was. Later in the book you see that it belongs to Kate Barlow. She was a teacher in the town of Green Lake. She kissed a black man, so the police chief hanged him. Kate killed the police chief and became Kissin' Kate Barlow, the most feared outlaw in the West.

The boys at Camp Green Lake gave the object to the Warden, who made them dig around where the object was found. They dug all day for weeks until Zero, another boy at the camp, ran away. Stanley ran after him a few days later. He found Zero under a boat, drinking an orange liquid from glass jars. Stanley drank some, and tried to convince Zero to return to camp. Zero refused, so they went away from the camp toward a rock that looked like a thumb. They walked toward it for days, and while they were walking Zero started to get sick. It must have been from the liquid in the boat. Eventually they reached the end of the lake, but this side was almost straight up. They slowly climbed up and proceeded toward the big thumb. When they finally arrived, Zero got worse and Stanley had to carry him up the rock. On the way up, Zero told Stanley that his real name was Hector Zeroni. When they got to the top, they found water and onions. They ate only onions for weeks and Zero got better. They decided to go back to Camp Green Lake and try to find the thing the Warden was looking for. When they got there, they stole some food and started digging. They found a suitcase with "Stanley Yelnats" printed on it. It belonged to our Stanley's grandfather, Elya's son. Stanley's lawyer came and pronounced that Stanley had been proven innocent. While Zero and Stanley were leaving camp in Stanley's lawyer's car, it started to rain because the great great grandson of Elya Yelnats carried the great great great grandson of Madame Zeroni up the mountain where the water runs uphill. In the end, Zero hired a private investigator and found his mother, and the contents of the suitcase were worth a lot of money, so the Yelnats family moved to a nice house.