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Holes (novel)

Holes AuthorLouis SacharLanguageEnglishGenreAdventurePublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux (US) Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) Ediciones SM (Spain)August 20, 1998ISBN978-0-786-22186-8OCLC3800257333232 21LC ClassPZ7.S1185 Ho 1998
Holes is a 1998 young adult novel written by Louis Sachar and first published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book centers on Stanley Yelnats, who is sent to Camp Green Lake, a correctional boot camp in a desert in Texas, after being falsely accused of theft. The plot explores the history of the area and how the actions of several characters in the past have affected Stanley's life in the present. These interconnecting stories touch on themes such as racism, homelessness, illiteracy, and arranged marriage.

The book was both a critical and commercial success. Much of the praise for the book has centered around its complex plot, interesting characters, and representation of people of color and incarcerated youth. It won the 1998 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the 1999 Newbery Medal for the year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children". In 2012 it was ranked number six among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal.

Holes was adapted by Walt Disney Pictures as a feature film of the same name released in 2003. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, grossing million, and was released in conjunction with the book companion Stanley Yelnats's Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake. A sequel to Holes entitled Small Steps was published in 2006 and centers on one of the secondary characters in the novel, Armpit.

Plot
Stanley Yelnats IV is from an allegedly cursed, low-income family, for which they blame Stanley's "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great-great-grandfather". Stanley's latest stroke of misfortune occurs when he is wrongfully convicted of stealing a pair of athletic shoes that belonged to a famous baseball player. He is sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile corrections facility which is located in the middle of a dried-up desert lake. The "campers" are assigned to dig one cylindrical hole each day, which the Warden claims "builds their character". The novel alternates this story with two set in the past, with interrelated but distinct plot lines.

Elya Yelnats
Stanley's Latvian great-great-grandfather, Elya Yelnats, is in love with Myra, the most beautiful girl in the village. However, he faces competition from the local pig farmer Igor Barkov, who is offering Myra's father Morris his fattest pig in exchange for her hand in marriage. Elya goes to his friend Madame Zeroni, an old Egyptian fortune teller with a missing foot, for help. Despite not approving of Myra as a partner for Elya due to her lack of intelligence, Zeroni takes pity on Elya and gives him a tiny piglet, instructing him to carry it up a mountain every day and let it drink from a stream while singing a special song to it. Each time, the pig will grow bigger; if he does this every day, including the day Myra is to be married, his pig will be fatter than any of Igor's. Zeroni says that in return, Elya must then carry her up the mountain and sing to her. She warns him that if he does not do this, his family will be cursed.

Elya follows her directions every day except for the last; as a result, his pig and Igor's weigh exactly the same. However, after realizing Madame Zeroni was right about Myra's lack of intelligence when she's unable to choose between him or Igor, Elya leaves in disgust and decides to move to America, but forgets his promise to Zeroni. Though he falls in love with and marries the kind and intelligent Sarah Miller, he becomes beset by bad luck. Elya tells Sarah about the curse and tells her to leave him. Sarah refuses to leave Elya and the song that he sang to the pig becomes a lullaby that is passed down among his descendants, hoping that it will one day break the curse.

Kissin' Kate Barlow
In the year 1888, the town of Green Lake is a flourishing lakeside community. Katherine Barlow, the white local schoolteacher, falls in love with Sam, an African-American onion farmer, while rejecting advances from the wealthy Charles "Trout" Walker (nicknamed Trout because his feet smelled like dead fish.). Katherine and Sam are seen kissing by Trout Walker, so he forms a mob and they burn down the school Katherine is working at. However, the town sheriff refuses to help Katherine, as Trout Walker reported that they kissed, and that it's against the law. Katherine finds Sam and they attempt to escape across the lake in Sam's rowboat, but Walker and the mob intercept them with Walker's motorboat. Sam is shot dead, while Katherine is "rescued" against her wishes. From then on, rain stops falling upon Green Lake.

Three days later, Katherine shoots the town sheriff as revenge for his refusal to help. She then becomes a notorious outlaw called "Kissin' Kate Barlow", nicknamed so for her calling card of leaving a red lipstick kiss on the cheeks of the men she kills. For the next twenty years, she robs multiple banks across the state of Texas. Among her victims is Stanley's great-grandfather, who she leaves stranded in the desert; he survives after finding refuge on "God's thumb". She returns to the ruins of Green Lake and is found by a now-destitute Trout Walker and his wife Linda, one of Katherine's former students who married Trout for his money. They try to force her to reveal where she buried the money she'd stolen from numerous banks, but she refuses, telling them they and their descendants can spend the rest of their lives digging in the desert and never find her loot. Just then, a yellow-spotted lizard sneaks up and bites Katherine. She uses its venom as an advantage and thinks that no one will be able to threaten her with murder. Before she dies, Katherine tells them to start digging, for it will take a lifetime or more for them to ever find her bounty.

Camp Green Lake
The Warden allows the campers the rest of their day off if they find anything "interesting". Stanley begins to suspect the Warden is looking for something. During one dig, he finds one of Barlow's lipstick tubes. He gives it to X-Ray, the ringleader of his group, who pretends to find it the next day in a different location. The Warden is excited by the discovery and orders them to enlarge X-Ray's hole. Stanley later befriends Zero, a camper who quietly keeps to himself, and teaches Zero to read in return for Zero digging part of Stanley's holes. This leads to an argument with the other campers, and then the staff. Zero then flees. The camp staff decide to erase their records of Zero, whose full name is Hector Zeroni, and let him die in the desert.

A few days later, Stanley escapes the camp to look for Hector and finds him taking refuge under the remains of Sam's boat, subsisting on preserved jars of Kate Barlow's spiced peaches, which he calls "Sploosh". Hector refuses to go back to the camp. Stanley then notices a mountain in the distance that resembles a thumbs up sign, and recalls his great-grandfather claimed to find "refuge on God's thumb" after being stranded in the desert by Kate Barlow. They journey across the desert and up the mountain, where they discover a field of onions that was once Sam's. The boys eat the onions and find water by digging in the ground, and Stanley sings Madame Zeroni's song to Hector, breaking the family curse. Hector then reveals that he was the one who stole Clyde Livingston's shoes. Wondering if their meeting was destiny, Stanley asks Hector if he wants to help him dig one last hole.

They return to camp and dig in the hole where Stanley first found the lipstick tube, unearthing a suitcase and venomous lizards. The Warden and the staff appear and demand they hand it over, but retreat because of the lizards, which are passive to Stanley and Hector due to the onions they consumed. The Warden is revealed to be Trout Walker's granddaughter and she's been using the camp and the campers to find Kate Barlow's stolen treasure. Stanley's attorney appears at the camp, explaining that Stanley has been exonerated. Hector reveals the suitcase belongs to the Yelnats family, stopping the Warden from taking it. Fearing that the Warden will kill Hector if they leave him behind, Stanley refuses to leave unless Hector can come along. The attorney asks for Hector's file, but the camp staff are naturally unable to find it, so Hector is also released. Stanley and Hector then say goodbye to the other campers, and as they drive away, the drought in Green Lake comes to an end.

The suitcase contains financial documents that are worth close to two million dollars, which is split evenly between Stanley and Hector. Stanley's family buys a new house and Hector hires a team of investigators to find his missing mother. Stanley's father also makes further money by inventing an antidote to foot odor, made from peaches and onions, and named "Sploosh", which is endorsed by Clyde Livingston. Meanwhile, Camp Green Lake is closed and sold to become a newly remodeled Girl Scouts' camp.

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