First published 1996
Bone is a teenager with nowhere to go and no one who cares. He drifts through a world of abandoned places and broken people, sleeping where he can and surviving however he must. The streets have become his home, and the outcasts he meets have become his family. Bone speaks in his own raw language, telling his story without apology or explanation. He faces dangers that would crush most kids his age, but he keeps moving forward with a stubborn refusal to give up. Banks creates a character who sees the world clearly despite his youth, someone who finds meaning in the chaos around him. This is a story about what happens when society fails its children, and how those children learn to save themselves. At its heart, the novel explores how a young person builds identity and finds connection when everything familiar has been stripped away.
Genres: american-fiction, coming-of-age, contemporary, adolescence
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
390 pages · Paperback · HarperPerennial
Content warnings: abuse, child-abuse