Ironically, I read this book in its entirety on my flight from Milwaukee to Las Vegas and it made the time go quickly. Sherman Alexie’s novel, classified as young adult, starts out in a realistic fashion—Zits (he says, “Call me Zits,”) is a teenage Indian boy in foster care, who is angry, angry, angry. In the first couple of pages of the story, he has run away from his millionth foster home after mouthing off to his foster dad. By the end of the day, he finds himself in jail, again, and talking to a fellow teen named Justice. Justice inspires Zits to do something that has dire consequences but instead of dying, Zits finds himself jumping from body to body in the past—each experience connecting to Zit’s identity as an Indian and as a boy who has lost his parents. The adventures that Zits has and the lessons he learns are not easy and sometimes scarily violent, and Zits struggles to develop a new path for himself. Alexie tells this story with humor, vivid detail, and an eye to making Zits as realistic as possible. At the end of the book, I wanted to stand up and clap as Zits attempts to create his own community.
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