Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks

I should have included this book a long time ago, but as the pregnant chick said on the way to the shot-gun wedding, better late than never. If you were bored out of your skull reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in English class, than ditch that dusty classic and pick up Rule of the Bone. Russell Banks has basically re-written the Huck Finn epic and made it way, way hipper. Huck is now Chappie, a fourteen year old trailer-park punk who gets kicked out of his house, hangs with bikers, and gets a tattoo. It’s only when he meets I-Man, a pot-smoking enlightened Rastafarian (who makes a great contemporary Jim) and travels with him to Jamaica, that Chappie realizes the potential that his life has and the man he will become. So much stuff happens in this book, including fires, break-ins and homeless people living in abandoned school buses that now you HAVE to read it to find out how it all ties together! It’s hokey for me to say it, but this is really a gem of a boy book.