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Kindle Home is the last group home kids in the foster system are usually sent to before being sent to Eat-Their-Young Island- a prison-like compound from which nobody leaves before turning 18. The kids have nicknamed Kindle Home The Last Chance Texaco because it's the last chance stop before a kid is sent to Eat-Their-Young Island. Lucy Pitt knows all of this, and so she's not real happy to be at Kindle Home. The "home" isn't exactly like all of the others she's been at- the counselors are better, the house itself is a dilapidated old mansion, the neighborhood is extremely upper class- but a lot is the same- there's the same sort of pecking order social structure with the kids, there are the same rules and bed checks, the local kids are even more hostile than at other schools and even have the same name for the kids; "Groupies". In her eight years in the foster system, Lucy has been through more than her fair share of group and foster homes. She figures this one won't last any longer. She figures it's her last stay in the general world before she is sent to Eat-Their-Young Island.
It doesn't take long for Lucy to make the first step towards being kicked out of Kindle Home. She makes enemies with the house therapist, a jerk named Emil. Nobody likes Emil, but he has the last say in sending kids to Eat-Their-Young Island. When the home bully named Joy steals Lucy's roomate Yolanda's cigarettes, Lucy makes sure that Joy is caught with the cigarettes, and makes another enemy. On the second day of school, Lucy attacks Nate Brandon, an all-around good student and athlete, after being provoked. The principal, another jerk, wants to expel Lucy. Happily, Lucy's maverick counselor Leon points out that it is Lucy's first infraction, and that the school code says that both parties in a fight must be punished equally, regardless of who started it. So Lucy is only given suspension and eight weeks' clean-up by the principal. Leon tells Lucy that he wants to help her to stay out of Eat-Their-Young Island. In exchange, he wants her to trust the adults at Kindle Home. Lucy agrees, and Leon convinces the other councelors that fighting Nate Brandon is a school issue, and shouldn't get Lucy expelled from the Home.
For a time, life goes on. Lucy warms towards Nate while she is on garbage detention with him. One of the other kids in the Home messes up and is sent away. Then someone- Lucy would guess Joy- plants Oxies under Lucy's bed. Since Lucy was once addicted to Oxies, the evidence is against Lucy. Emil is all for sending her away, but the counselors think that Lucy deserves another chance. So Emil merely gives Lucy 40 points(kind of like demerits, they remove priviledges), institutes random urine tests, and warns her that this is two strikes- three and she's out.
Nate Brandon becomes Lucy's boyfriend, but this threatens to be short lived. Lucy's stay at Kindle Home is being threatened on two fronts. If Joy chooses to start a fight that would be Lucy's third strike. But a bigger threat looms- Kindle Home may be shut down. Someone is starting fires in cars around Kindle Home, and the neighbors think that one of the Groupies has to responsible. Nate and Lucy set out to catch the culprit and save Kindle Home.
Lucy is a very likeable main character and narrator. Her narrative is frank and never stoops to self pity, but is still believable. Nate's friendliness is not so plausible- how he comes to change his attitude so completely is not understandable to me. I like him anyways. The psychological reasons given for so many of the actions undertaken are funny, the more so because they are an acurate portrayal of how people are desribed when they are seen as damaged goods.
Happy reading.
Behind Deep Blue Building The Computer That Defeated the World Chess Champion
by Feng-Hsiung Hsu
According to this book, four to five billion impressions were generated by the Deep Blue v. Garry Kasparov chess matches, where an impression is when something registers with the watcher. So chances are, you've heard about Deep Blue. But most of us don't know the story of how Deep Blue evolved. I wasn't born when Feng-Hsiung Hsu began working on a ChipTest, his first chess computer. And although most of you were alive at the time, it's a safe bet that you weren't aware that ChipTest existed while it existed (unless of course you found this site by running a search on the book). And so the story of Deep Blue, Deep Thoughts I and II, and ChipTest, ought to present you with a new and interesting story. Because it is an interesting story, written for those with no chess or computer knowledge, and for those with one or both.
In 1982, Feng-Hsiung Hsu came to the United States in order to attend the graduate school in Computer Sciences at Carnegie Mellon. In May 1985, Hans Berliner, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, asked Hsu to do some work on the design of Hitech, a chess machine with a 64-chip design. After studying the design for a while, Hsu told Berliner that the 64-chip design was not a good idea. Berliner was insulted, and as Hsu's position as a graduate student who had pulled too many pranks was tenuous, his advisor suggested that he write up his idea of a better design for the faculty. Working on that design, Hsu saw that he had a chance at the Holy Grail of computer science, and decided to go for it. Towards this goal, Hsu recruited numerous other people to work on his project. ChipTest, built entirely by students on a student budget, was a success on the computer chess level, but it was not nearly strong enough to defeat Garry Kasparov, the intended opponent. Deep Thought followed, and along its development, the men working on it left Carnegie Mellon to work at IBM, and Deep Thought became an IBM project. The IBM team did build Deep Blue, which did beat Garry Kasparov.
Usually after my summary I tell you why you should read the book, but I already did that in the first paragraph, so instead, here are some impressions of the book. One, I love that Deep Thought was named after the computer in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Two, there are almost no women in this book. In the first hundred pages of this book, there are four references from which you know that women exist, none of which are actual characters. There are two female characters in this book though; Xie Jun, who won the Women's World Chess Championship, tied Deep Thought II in a match, and appears in this book for a little over one page, and Garry Kasparov's mother. Third impression- the computer program was written in a way that involves chess more than I thought. Fourth- strangely enough, I feel that there is character development in this book. If you pay attention, you will notice that Hsu acts more maturely towards the end of the book.
This site crashed during Deep Blue's first game against Kasparov. At the time, it got the most simultaneous hits of any site ever:
Chess.IBM.Com Educational reading.
Thirteen-year-old Zel lives happily with her mother in the country in the mid-1500s. On their semiannual trip to town, days before her birthday, Zel meets Count Konrad, a youth a few years older than her. After she helps the smith with the youth's horse, the youth insists on repaying her, and Zel asks for a goose egg, for the goose who lives near her and always insists on lying on a nest of stones. The youth finds an egg for her, and Zel is most grateful. After returning to their home, Zel's mother finds to her dismay that Zel has developed a crush. Mother is made desperate by the thought that Zel might leave her. She locks Zel in a tower, telling Zel that it is for her own good, and that there are bad people out looking to hurt her. Zel stays in the tower for over two years, during which her sanity becomes questionable. In the meantime, Konrad has searched high and low for Zel, but he cannot find her. Until one day, betrothed and soon to marry, not even looking, he finds the tower where Zel is standing in her window, and he recognizes her.
Since this is a telling of Rapunzel, you probably know what happens next. This narrative stays true to every detail of the story, and at the end, you are forced to empathise even with Mother, who loved her Zel, for whom she traded rapunzel and her soul. The narrative is third person limited throughout, with the person focused on changing with every chapter. To tell this story, Napoli chooses the setting of 16th century Europe. If you wanted the story to be told in a more modern fashion, what changes would you make in the story?
Happy reading.
In 2070, Frederick Hallam, an undeserving and rather stupid radiochemist, discovered that the Tungsten metal left on his desk wasn't Tungsten metal. He accuses a colleague of tampering with the metal, and when the colleague protests his innocence, Hallam takes it to be be tested. The technician says that its plutonium 168, nonradioactive. But there is no such thing, and Hallam knows it. So he tests it himself, and confirms that it is plutonium 168, but he finds it to be radioactive. And every time he tests it, Hallam finds it to be more radioactive. More tungsten is layed out, and it is also swapped for plutonium 168. After a short while, a message is received on iron showing how to build a mechanism to make the trade of plutonium 186-now called Hallam's metal, and Tungsten. It was speculated that the metal comes from a parallel universe, where the attraction between protons and neutrons might be weaker.
Now it is thirty years later. Pete Lamont is studying the history of Hallam's metal, and in an interview with Hallam, he accidentally sets Hallam off by suggesting that the transfer of materials was really set up by the men of the parallel-universe, and that Hallam himself didn't deserve all of the credit for his discovery. Hallam puts Lamont on his black list and Lamont, in his anger, begins to work out that Hallam's pump may not be such a good thing. He finds that the exchange going on between the two universes is likely to heat the solar system to the point where the sun would become a super-nova, and all of Earth's life forms would die within a period of five minutes, without any warning.
He attempts without success to get the earth to pay attention to his warnings, but without concrete proof or Hallam's backing, nobody will listen to him. So Lamont enlists the aid of a linguist, and they set out to communicate to the paramen that there is danger in the transfer of materials. Somebody does respond to their warning, but only to say that they are right to fear, and he cannot stop on his side. The inscription from the other universe asks the humans to please stop on their side; as we know, they can't do it.
Switch your focus now, go to the para-universe. There we watch in alternating chapters, a triad of beings whose food is energy. Their emotions and interactions are much less urgent. The reader can relax now, little details won't come back to bite him. We watch Dua, Odeen, and Tritt, whose triad is the most unusual in anyone's memory. Dua is a the rebel, a mid-ling both smart enough to figure out that the new food will destroy the beings in the other place, and empathetic enough to care. Tritt is the parent, who will do anything to have his children. And Odeen is a brilliant left, who is only trying not to make waves. The Hard Ones are watching this trio with much interest, and so will we.
And now we go back to our own universe, a few more years into the future. Benjamin Allan Denison, the hapless colleague whom Hallam had suspected of messing with his Tungsten so many years earlier. Denison is moving to the moon, where he hopes to escape Hallam's blacklist. On the moon, Denison becomes caught in a power struggle between those from Earth and the citizens of the moon. In the process, he learns a lot, including how to solve stop the sun from blowing up, balance power on the moon, and win the woman who has led him to his discoveries.
Happy reading and musing.
Civil Wars: A Battle For Gay Marriage By David Moats
On December 20th, 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that denying gay couples the benefits of marriage was against its state constitution. The legislature was instructed to rectify the problem. The people of Vermont then had a politicl topic that mattered to almost all of them. Protestors and demonstrators organized. Speeches were made. People were forced to think about a topic that made many of them very uncomfortable.
This is an account of how the legislators decided the issue and of the people who made them decide. It takes a liberal perspective that tries to include the perspectives of opponents of gay marriage, without legitimizing them. It talks about the history of Vermont, and the issues facing specifically Vermonters, and the issues facing all of America today as it grapples with the reality of families that include LGBs. It talks of politicians that most Americans are familiar with, as well as more obscure people.
Keeping track of the many people dramatically portrayed can get a little bit difficult. And gay marriage is an uncomfortable issue for many people. But I think it's worth your thoughts. Please share your thoughts on civil unions v. marriage.
Thoughtful reading.
America is a fifteen-year-old boy in a mental hospital. He is seriously depressed(which is why he's there), and is trying desperately to forget his past. His therapist doesn't want to let him forget though. Him and his stupid questions. America starts telling us in flashes the things he doesn't want to remember. He tries not to tell his therapist, though. He knows that there's nowhere to go if he has to leave the hospital. And one day he sees his brother serving lunch. The cracks in his brain are leaking memories, and he can't stop them. And so he begins to tell his story, relieving once and for all his burdens.
The style of this book, of the street-talking America, is nothing short of magnificent. The content is short of magnificent. It is the sappy, wishful thinking of a therapist. But it does contain what a therapist would nkow about the troubles America, the boy and the people, really do have to face.
Happy reading.
American Vampires: Fans, Victims, Practitioners by Norine Dresser
After reading the title, I had large expectations of this book. Fans ought to mean, people who really dig vampires, but it actually refers to fans of fictional stories about vampires. Victims ought to mean victims of vampires, people whose blood was drunk. In this book, it refers to pyrophoria victims, who were demonized as vampires by the press after a professor named Dolphin hypothosized that pyrophoria patients were the truth behind the legend of vampires, which in fact, fact painstakingly laid out here, is false. These are interesting, but not the fasnicating content suggested by the title. Good marketing is not necessarily condusive to helping me choose good books. This book emphasizes the manner in which the American people view vampires. It tries, over and over, to convice the reader that the topic is something else. But the topic is a proof, repeated often, that Americans have a definite fixation with vampires, that vampires are part of American culture. Dresser's insistance that Americans are attracted to vampires is extremely emphatic, and it appears even more emphatic than it is because there is nobody claiming that vampires are not a part of American culture. Or if anyone is of that opinion, he's not cited here.
Happy reading.
Eva's dad is in charge of chimpanzee reseach, and so she has grown up around chimpanzees. When Eva is in sent into a coma after a car crash, her parents opt to have Eva's memories, her self, placed in the body of a chimpanzee, who was formerly named Kelly. Even before being told that she is in the body of a chimpanzee, Eva dreams of trees. And after being told that she is in Kelly's body, Eva knows that the dream of trees is Kelly's dream. Eva knows that part of Kelly is also a part of her. Eva insists on being with the chimpanzees at the reseach center and socializing, and she feels that she is more chimpanzee than human. The son of one of the directors making ads with the chimpanzees convinces Eva that humans have overpopulated the world, are shutting down, and heading towards extinction, and Eva decides to take action to save the chimpanzees.
Of the many interesting premises in this book, some make more sense than others. For example, if suicide has really become so rampant, and people have stopped caring about the future, why are people so fervent about their jobs? The technology used in this book is explained poorly, although the concepts are interesting. Eva is on a lot of dope during her hospital stay, and I don't see how Eva's not the least bit addicted after leaving the hospital. And in Eva's final plan for the chimpanzees, how the chimpanzees get food is not explained well. The general premises are still interesting. How would you feel if you woke up one day to find yourself paralyzed, and as you gained consciousness, found out that you were in someone else's body?
Happy reading.
Arvin's friend Sheldon is a hacker, and he's hacked a Rasmussen program. The program takes Sheldon, Arvin, their friends, and Arvin's mother(a major embarrassment to Arvin) into a world where nothing is as it seems. Arvin becomes Harek Longbow of the Silver Mountain Clans, an elf. His friends also become characters in the program, on the quest. The quest appears to be saving the princess, who has been kidnapped. For the quest, program characters are supposed to accompany and guide them, but these characters start looping early on in the game. After fighting a water-creature, Arvin's mother develops an awful headache that does not appear to be part of the program.
They split into two groups. Harek's group is captured by slavers, whom they escape. His group picks the wrong approach with an old man, breaking down his door, so that they have to pay heavily for magic items taken from a frozen troll. Then they run into a group of people butchered by wolves, and meet a man who says that the slaughtered people were his brothers, and that he was attacked. Wolstan joins the group. Then they go through caves filled with rats and orcs, and then Robin gets sucked into by sand hands, and nobody knows if he's alive. By now, you should see the pattern: anything that can go wrong, does.
Fiction books begin with the premise that the reader knows that none of the events in the story really happened. Fantasy books one reads with the knowledge that the events of the story couldn't happen. This is a science fiction world, in which we have a fantasy world, making the events of this book as far removed from the reader as possible. That said, this story still manages to draw the reader in is remarkable.
Happy reading.
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Brett has always been a spoiled rich kid, and he is entirely unprepared for the life of "poverty" forced upon him when his father is convicted of illegal stock trading. Since money means everything to Brett, and since he now has none, Brett gets a job. His first job, at Fast Burger, doesn't last long. Brett hates the job, feels that it's beneath him, and it shows. He quits just as he is about to be fired. Then he gets a job working with Alfie. Alfie is the guy who used to clean Brett's pool, back when Brett had a house with a pool. Alfie is an old guy in his seventies, who is always running, always moving. And Alfie needs some help with his pool cleaning business. Working with Alfie, Brett learns how to deal with his own anger at his father.
This book is well written but very predictable. The book jacket is very frustraing. It has a picture of a guy swimming(which is misleading as Brett isn't allowed to swim in the pools he cleans) and half the guy is on the right end of the front cover, and half on the left end of the cover, and I can't connect the two halves. grrr.
Happy reading.
In the present, Etsuko lives in Britain, widowed. Her younger daughter is visiting, and her older daughter is dead. But in the past which she thinks about, she is living in Nagasaki with her first husband and her father-in-law is visiting. She has befriended a foolish woman whose daughter runs wild.
We never find out what happens in the middle, how she goes from living in post war Nagasaki to living in England. What the significance of the time she chooses to think about is, is also unclear. The plot and characters are very realistic, and the scenes portrayed show the general scheme of things more than they do the actual plot.
Happy reading.
The Black Panther Party[Reconsidered] edited by Charles E. Jones
"The objective of this book is to begin the process of systematic scholarly investigation of the historical role of this African American revolutionary organization."p12, Introduction. I don't know whether or not anyone picked up the thread of continuing the scholarly investigation, but it was certainly started well here. This is an anthology, with each chapter having different authors. The authors include Charles E Jones as well as Panthers and other historians. The book is divided into six parts, which cover the atmosphere of the time, stories of the rank and file, how the organization worked(with a chapter by Kathleen Cleaver), gender dynamics, why the BPP eventually closed in 1982, and what it left behind. Most chapters include detailed notes at the end, and are painstakingly backed with evidence. This is a very scholarly work and not very easy to read. To read this book, I suggest that you first have some knowledge of communist philosophy and Black militant organizations of the time.
Educational reading.
The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon(I mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin
Library of Congress in Publication Data: Summary: The Disappearance of her husband is only the first of the mysteries Mrs. Carillon must solve. [1. Mystery and detective stories [2. Humorous stories.] first printing 1971, 1989
Caroline Little Dumpling Fish's parents and Leon Carillon's parents produce a wonderful soup at their thanksgiving dinner, and decide to mass market it. They argue about the name of the soup; Carillon or Fish? until it is decided- Little dumpling will marry Leon, and so it will be named after both families, Mrs. Carillon's Pomato Soup. Leon and Little Dumpling, thereafer called Mrs.Carrilon, are married at once, and their parents run a very prosperous business. Leon is sent off to a boarding school, and Little Dumpling gets a governess. The parents are killed in an explosion after a few years, but this does not really matter to Mrs. Carillon or Noel(or rather Leon), as the parents had not been particularly attentive parents anyhow. Leon always sends Mrs. Carillon a card on their anniversary, until finally, when she is 19, he asks her to meet him at a hotel. She goes to the hotel, and meets a man who says he is Leon. They go boating, and the boat capsizes. The last Mrs. Carillon sees of Leon, he is saying something through a mouthful of water, and she can not make out exactly what he is saying.
Mrs.Carillon spends the next 20 years looking for Leon (remember she owns half of Mrs. Carillon's Pomato Soup). During those years, she carefully keeps her appearance as it was at the hotel. She follows horse racing faithfully, as Leon mentioned wanting a horse in one of his cards to her. One day, she meets twins who are living in an orphanage, and she adopts them. They convince her to settle down in New York. They continue to look to look for Leon there, and as they are no longer moving around to look for Leon, they spend a lot of time working on the message, which they call the glub glubs.
This book can be read with pen and paper and a bookmark as a puzzlebook, or it can be read as a book of humor. The illustrations(by the author) are really fun to look at, because they are made of smaller parts that have to do with the whole. Having been written thirty years ago, the attitudes shown in this book, and the money amounts, will appear outdated to anyone who actually falls in the target audiance- 10 to 14.
LOL or Solvable reading- your choice
Missy Greer, our narrator most chapters, grew up in the 70's in a small town Kentucky southern town. Pittman county is so behind the times that phone calls were handled by an operator instead of a dial until 1973. From the money she makes working at the local hospital, Missy buys a car, and then she drives out of Pittman County. She decides to change her name to Taylor after the first place she runs out of gas in. Taylor drives adventurously for a while, and then a broken rocker arm(part of her car) forces her to stop at a station near the edge of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. As she is about to leave, a woman comes over to her car with a toddler, and deposits the baby on Taylor's front passenger seat. She asks Taylor to take the baby, and Taylor does.
Lou Ann Ruiz is pregnant, which she is happy about. She is not getting along well with her husband, which she is not happy about. Angel (pronounced Ahn-hel) leaves her, and takes with him everything he considers his, which includes the TV set. Lou Ann is not working, having quit her job earlier to take care of Angel after his leg was amputated. After alternating chapter where we watch Lou Ann in the third person and listen to Taylor in the first, Taylor moves in with Lou Ann after Lou Ann advertises for a roomate, Angel's space being vacant. Taylor gets a job at a the Jesus Is Lord Used tires, which turns out to house illegal immigrants who should have been given political asylum, but weren't.
This is an awesome story, but after reading it I'm left with the feeling that I never quite got the point- it's subtle. Politically, the point is definitively made on immigration, and there is a definite disparagement of the Children and Family Services agency. The tone and style of Taylor's narration remind me of To Kill A Mockingbird, although possibly that's only because it has a definite southern accent and makes a point about people's prejudices and the justice system. The manner in which Taylor seems to make friends seems unrealistic, although possible. The nature scenes in this book are great, and since the author lives right where the scenes take place, they're probably even real. One topic is almost missing- race relations. The illegal immigrant Estevan mentions American thinking along racial lines, and Lou Ann's parents hold a grudge against Angel for being Mexican, but unlike almost every other conflict in the narrative, this one is not analyzed.
Happy reading.
Anna is shy, small, semi-invisable, and great at hiding. She never leaves the house, and the neighbors don't know she exists. Her mother decides to enroll her in school, and invites a therapist to come over and meet Anna so that they can decide how to school her. But when the therapist comes, she can't see Anna, and she thinks that Anna is a figment of her younger sister's imagination. Anna accidentally gets stuck in the therapist's purse, and leaves the house for the first time in her life. It is scary to be outside, and she resolves that it will never happen again.
Anna has always been good with tools, and for a while she has been working on constructing a hiding place inside the walls. She goes inside to hide, and decides that she does not want to come out. Anna lives inside the walls. She partitions off more and more of the house for her own abode. She comes out only at night. And in the wall, Anna grows up, and becomes a woman. At the beginning, she does not recognize what she is becoming, but she realises it when one of the boys who is always hanging around Anna's house because of Anna's sister Andrea sticks a letter in the wall. It says:
Dear A,
I love you.
Sincerely yours,
F
Anna knows it's to her. She is in love. She dreams about F all the time. And then it turns out that A is Andrea! And now you have to read the book. Ha ha.
Happy reading.
The Snark Puzzle Book by Martin Gardner
Based on Lewis Carroll's nonsense poems The Hunting of the Snark and Jabberwocky With the original illustrations by Henry Holiday and Sir John Tenniel
This book contains the entire poems listed above, the illustratiosn, and 75 riddles/ puzzles. The riddles contain: general mind teasers adapted to the nonsense world of Lewis Carroll, reading comprehension, neat points ertaining to the illustration, comparison of the two poems, and some problems easily solvable with algebra. The level of the puzzles is generally around the level of someone on an eighth grade reading and math level. The poems and illustrations themselves are nice. The Jabberwocky is much more cryptic and nonsensical than The Hunting of the Snark. The questions are all asked opposite parts of the Snark, with the Jabberwocky in the back of the book. Answers to all but one puzzle(that one being the maze), are included in the back of the book.
Happy solving.
Lily's mom can't hold a job and always has disastrous loves that peter out after she(Lily's mom) gets engaged. This time, Lily and her mother move into the summer home of Lily's great uncle, which is haunted. Haunted not by one ghost, but by many ghosts. How many? That's not clear. A lot. And they are all trying to tell Lily something that is very important, but not terribly clear. Except for one ghost, who is trying to get revenge because she thinks that Lily is someone else.
Lily is just trying to cope with a bizarre old house, a scary great uncle, creepy ghosts, homeschooling for the first time, and a first boyfriend.
The adults in this story are all stupid, wicked, or both. Lily's boyfriend Vaz is the only really intelligent person in this book... Lily doesn't even like books! The alternating chapters about ghosts and Lily gives a nice shadowing to the plot. At one point, a ghost puts jelly in Lily's shoes. If you woke up one morning to find your shoes full of jam, what would your reaction be?
Happy reading.
Nick's parents fight after Nick's father insists on having a basketball court in the back where Nick's mother has always had a garden. Nick loves basketball, and now that there is a court he can play all the time. His older brother Scott, who doesn't really love basketball and had avoided it by saying that the court was too far away, now is not happy to be forced to play. During the summer, Scott is willing to play. But at the end of the summer his girlfriend, who is a musician, returns from Europe and Scott wants to spend all of his time with music. Fighting over that issue, Nick's parent's split up. With his father gone, Nick spends little time on his schoolwork. He works all of his problems away on the basketball court.
Nick and his friend Luke are sophmores this year, and they are hoping to make the basketball team. They practice all the time. Trent Dawson is the kid across the street. On their block, all of the families have nice little gardens and trash cans. The Dawsons have no garden and their trash can is always knocked over. Trent is good at basketball, and in PE he always plays well, but he has never tried out for a team because his grades are awful. Trent's mother's boyfriend asks Nick's mother if Trent can use their basketball court in the evenings. To Nick's dismay, his mother says yes. When tryouts come along, everyone is surprised to see Trent. Trent plays very aggressively, but he plays well. Nick is disgusted when Trent makes the team, because he does not like playing against Trent. Luke points out that the other team won't like playing against Trent, either.
Predictably, Nick and Trent help each other to help the team and to cope with their lives. If I were to tell you how that happens, I'd be giving the book away. Suffice it to say that they do help each other, that Nick and trent both grow, that the characters are realistic, and that the actual events of the story aren't as predictable as the outcome.
Happy reading.
