Imprisoned by a grand-larcenous gang who think he's double-crossed them, he barely escapes a raging fire that, like Huck Finn, leaves people believing him dead. And therewith begins a long and coincidence-driven tale as Chappie is loosed upon the world. Chappie Dorset is 14 and ``heavy into weed'' when he starts his life of crime: caught stealing, he cuts out, leaving behind his divorced mother, pet cat, and the vile stepfather who's been weaseling his own sexual pleasures from the boy for a considerable time. Banks follows The Sweet Hereafter (1991) with this in-the- hero's-own-words tale of an upstate New York teenager who has trouble aplenty with parents, drugs, and desperados.
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