Chapter 1:

I will summarize the whole book in my own words, but sometimes I will include quotes from the author because nobody can do it better...here we go =)

A year ago, Zack's parents told him that they were going to move into the countryside.

"It's a great opportunity for your dad," his mother had said, "He'll be the chair of the department"

Your mom has never liked the city," his dad had said "She can set up a recording studio in the house like she always wanted and grow a garden."

So Zack tried everything to try and prevent his parents to move into the country. He tried ranting and sulking, he ran away for three days and flunked two of his courses on purpose, but in the end, Zack's parents forced him to move into the country anyways.

A year later, while Zack is removing the previous owners' dog's "gifts" from the yard, Zack begins to think back to the old days when he used to live in the city and how he lived in a cramped two-bedroom apartment with his parents. So why is he unhappy that he now lives in a second floor bedroom with a big window that overlooks the yard? Well, that's because Zack is used to the traffic, paved sidewalks, restaurants, pool halls, and video arcades of the city and riding in public buses where you could see faces of every colour and hear languages of all sorts, as opposed to waking up every morning and walking down the unpaved driveway in the middle of no where to be "swallowed up by the big yellow monster to go to Boredom High School" in the boring town of Fergus.

This chapter is mainly background information. Don't worry, things will become more interesting as we go...

Chapter 2:

"Let's have it Zack", says a triumphant voice.

The voice behind Zack tells him that he has been caught slipping his diskette into his shirt pocket by his geography teacher, Mr. Jenkins.

"Um, what's wrong, sir?" says Zack turning off the monitor.

"You know what."

"It's my own personal disk. It's you know, confidential"

"Nice try"

"I can explain"

"I'm not interested. Let?s have it."

Zack lets out a sigh and passes the disk over his shoulder to Jenkins.

"Stick around at the end of the period"

For the last hour, the geography class had been pulling images from satellites so that they could watch the meteorological patterns. At least, most people were. A certain person had spent the last hour downloading files off the Internet, Zack had found it easy to go off task with Jenkins busy in a corner marking tests.

"Meet me in Ms. O'Neil's office after class, Zack, and bring your computer-use contract with you"

A few hours later, as Zack is heading towards the office, he guesses that Ms. O'Neil would revoke his privileges so that all he could do on the computer was to do word processing or spreadsheets.The only exception was to use a friend's login and password, but considering that Zack didn't have too many friends, that was pretty much impossible. Zack arrives at the principle's office and is seated across from Mr. Jenkins who was sitting beside Ms. O'Neil.

"Put you contract on the desk and take a seat, Zack," O'Neil says and then she picks up the receiver of the phone sitting on her desk, and punches in a number.

After a few awkward moments with Ms. O'Neil talking on the phone, and Mr. Jenkins looking out the window, and then examining his knuckles, Ms. O'Neil finishes her conversation on the phone and the door opens. As the door opens, Ms. O'Neil rises from her chair and looks toward the door expectantly, when she sees who's behind the door, her eyebrows rises in suprise. She looks at Zack and back to the guest, she then composes herself, and smiles.

"Mr. Lane? Come in, please"

Who is this stranger? Well, it's Zack's father. Zack understands why his principle looked so suprised, 'She had, naturally, assumed that my father would be black' thinks Zack

After the introductions are made, Mr. Lane sits down in the remaining chair.

"We've called you in because we feel that we have a rather serious problem on our hands" says O'Neil placing the diskette onto her desk, "I'd like you to see the material captured from the Internet by your son this afternoon when he was supposed to be...what was the lesson today, Mr. Jenkins?"

"Er, weather patterns through the satellite link" says Jenkins.

Ms. O'Neil inserts the diskette into her notebook and slowly scrolls through the pages in it. The first page shows the front of a pamplet reading : 'The Jewish Conspiracy:The Truth Will Out!!!' by Ernst Krupp. The second page shows a middle-aged man wearing a military cap with a logo on it in the centre of a small crowd holding a megaphone to his wide open mouth standing in front of a courthouse. The caption under the picture reading : 'Mr. Krupp tells all his trial' The next few pages were all filled with dense print and were titled 'The Lie About the Holocaust That Never Happened!!'

"You get the idea" Ms. O'Neil says.

"Ms. O'Neil, I'm not sure why you've called me away from work, but you said on the phone something about Zack breaking a computer-use contract-"

"Well, yes. All students have one to be able to get a login and a password. This contract requires-"

"I'm familiar with this concept. We have the same policy at the university."

"Indeed. Then you'll agree with the rule against access to hateful nature. Zack copied this...this material on the sly. It's obviously neo-Nazi garbage. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Certainly"

"To be frank, Mr.Lane, we're worried about this kind of thing. Aside from Zack's own opinions, which i suppose, he has a right to, I have the school's reputation to consider. I don't want the community to think that hate literature originated inside of this building."

"Has anyone asked Zack why he wanted this information?" says Mr.Lane in a calm voice, a voice Zack reconizes as him being angry.

"I got it for you, Dad"

Silence. Jenkins and O'Neil stare at Mr. Lane probably imagining him as a 'Skinhead' who recruits his son towards evil doings.

"I thought as much," says Mr.Lane after a few moments of silence and shooting his son a why-did-you-get-me-into-this-mess kind of look "You know I appreciate it, but you shouldn't have done it. Now, you're going to lose your privileges here."

Ms.O'Neil cuts in with anger in her voice and eyes"Let me get this straight. Your son has acquired hate literature on your behalf and it's okay with you? A load of Anti-Semitic -"

"I'm a Jew, Ms. O'Neil" interrupts Mr. Lane

Silence falls again and so does Ms. O'Neil jaw. Mr. Jenkins takes yet another look at his knuckles.

"But..." says the principal, you could almost see it on her lips- You don't look Jewish. Even through her make-up you could see her flush.

"Ms. O'Neil, I am an instructor in a university and my specialty is contemporary social history-a sort of oxymoron. Zack was just hoping to bring home some material that he thought I might be interested in. Rest assured, he was probably as offended by it as you are."

"Um...I see..."

"If you'll forgive me for saying so," he went on,"I think that if someone had simply asked Zack what he was up to, this whole misunderstanding could have been avoided."

"Well," O'Neil says and shoots a withering glance at Jenkins, who was fiddling with his tie. "You're quite right, I'm sorry we've troubled you. Considering the circumstances, we'll overlook Zack's transgression and reinstate his login."

Zack's father rises from his chair "That won't be necessary. Zack broke the rules, and now he should face the consequences." and with that, he shook hands with Jenkins and O'Neil and walked out the office.

In this chapter there were many important discoveries: we found out that Zack was African-Canadian and his father was Jewish which means his mother must be African-Canadian. We found out that Zack sometimes doesn't do what he is told. We also found out that Zack's last name is Lane and his father teaches at a university. Let's see what happens next... 

Chapter 3:

Zack's mother has always loved plants and she has instructed Zack to dig three holes in the yard so that she can grow three lilac bushes in them.

"You get the ground ready," she had said, "I'll plant the lilacs, on white one and two purple."

"Then can I use the truck?"

"When your dad and I get home"

When lunchtime comes around Zack had dug one hole, collected a whelbarrow full of rocks,  and given himself a various set of bruises. 'Time for a break,' thinks Zack. After a refreshing lunch of iced tea and a sandwich while admiring the results of his work and the view of the Grand River, Zack sets out to work again.

By mid-afternon, Zack had dug up another hole and dumped another wheelbarrow full of rocks down the river. On his third hole, Zack finds some remainders of a fire pit, about half a dozen of rock-like objects black with carbon and soot and crusted with damp and powdery mortar, about fifty centimetres below ground level. Zack clears the loose soil away and decides to go dozen another fifteen centimetres or so and then calling it quits. Something hard obstructs Zacks spade and Zack thinks it must be another stone. It clanked against the side of the wheel barrow when he threw it in, but he realizes that it isn't a stone.

Filled with curiousity, Zack carries the heavy object to the side of the house and washes it under the hose. The remaining soil falls away and an axe head is revealed. The axe head is caked with rust and the handle has long since been rotted away, the edge was dull and rounded. From Zack's in-experience with axe heads, he can still tell that this one is really old. 'Well, at least the day wasn't a tatl loss, but it was close.' thought Zack dropping the axe head by the kitchen door and headed back towards the hole.

The next shovel thrust brought a hollow thump. There was a corner of a box of some sort buried in the ground.

A half hour later, Zack was able to lift the box from the ground and he lifted it carefully out of the hole because it was so soft with rot that it almost fell apart in his hands. The box was about the size of a shoe box, but the lid wouldn't come off, so Zack runs into the house and comes back with a kitchen knife. Zack runs the knife along the dirt-clogged space between the lid and the side and finally, the top comes free. Two rolls of what were once white leather lay on the bottom of the moldy box, but when Zack tries to unwrap one, they begin to crackand break, so he decides to leave them. Another object is wrapped in greasy material-which, as Zack recognizes it, is leather-and when it is unwrapped, two 'C'-shaped loops made of rusted iron fall out. The C's are about half an inch thick and one C is bent back on itself to form a circle that is linked to the other C, put together, the circle was 20 centimetres in diameter and the free end of the C ahd a box-shaped loop on it. There was also a small skin pouch with a drawhide string in the box. When Zack pulled it open, it tore like wet paper. In side of the pouch was a small nugget the size of Zack's pinkie finger, it was bronze in colour, it was some kind of heavy and hard metal forged into a small ball.

'I wonder if it's-', thought Zack, then he laughed at himself, 'What a loser I am, getting mildly excited with an old box with a bunch of strange junk inside of it.'

There was a crunch of gravel coming from the front of the house signalling Zack that his parents were home. Hastily, Zack shove everything back inside of the box, runs into the house and puts the box inside of a grocery bag. Sprinting up the staris, Zack reaches his room and shoves the bag underneath his bed.

His father meets him at the bottom of the stairs.

"Hi, Zack. How's the farming?"

"Very exciting, Dad. I found an old axe head."

"My son, the antropologist." remarks Zack's mother while putting down two bags.

"Archeologist, Mom."

"Whatever"

Chapter 4:

Maybe it was because Zack's father was guilty about getting Zack in trouble at school on his behalf, but after dinner one night, Zack's father let Zack use the Toyota without the usual nagging.

In the car, Zack turns onto 'City Road 18' and travels out of Fergus and into Elora and follow some signs toward Elora Gorge Park. At Elora Park, Zack drives through it until he finds two cars parked beside some evergreens. Five teens stood around a fire, three guys and two girls. A few of them Zack recongnizes from jenkins' geography class.

"Hi, Colin!" greets Zack to a guy that he doesn't know that well, but he knew was a pretty good basketball player.

"Hey, Zack," he calls back, "how's it goin'?"

"Great"

Someone in the group says something and they laugh. A girl turns around; it's Jen. Jen sits behind Zack in homeroomand had shown Zack around on his first day. He had practically fallen in love with her because she seemed like her own person and took him seriously. He had hoped to find her there because Jen had once mentioned that she sometimes hung around there with her friends. 

The two other guys turned around and Zack noticed by their tank tops that they were also basketball players.

"Hey, man, got any beer?" one of them yelled

"No, but I can get some," Zack blurts out without thinking.

The tow of them let out a cheer, "All right!"

"See tou in a few minutes," Zack says and drives away in his truck

Zack had often spoken before he meant to in the past and he hoped that his Dad wouldn't notice if he grabbed some beer from the stash in the garage fridge. His Dad didn't drink it that often anyways...

Twenty minutes later, Zack arrives back at the park with a twelve-pack of beer.

"Hey, an angel of mercy!" Colin crows, "With the ticket of admission in his hands."

"Help yourselves" Zack invites.

Colin and one of the other guys dig in muttering "Thanks man" and then they head a distance away to toss a football around.

Zack carries four cans of beer over to the fire.

"Hi, Jen," Zack says as he passes beer around

"Hi, Zack. Meet Dave."

Dave and Zack shake hands.

"And this is my cousin Kirsten," Jen continues, "She's from Detroit and she's visiting us for a few dyas."

Zack pops open his can of beer. "Hi, Kirsten. How are things in Detroit?"

Kirsten looks Zack straight in the eye. "White," she sneers and looks away.

Zack breath catches in his throat as if he had been punched.

Dave lets out a derisive laugh and Jen claps her hand to her mouth, vainly trying to trap a giggle. Her eyes saucer in suprise.

Zack walks slowly away, feeling their eyes on his back as he gets into the truck and drives away.

Back on the road, Zack thinks back to his old school, how it was divided into the 'Blacks' the 'Whites' and the 'Browns' One of the things that Zack liked about his new school was that almost every one of them were white and wherever he looks, he only sees white, and he never and instead of seeing himself stand out all day, he can only see them and Zack start to feel like he belongs.

That is, until Jen's cousin woke him up.

Chapter 5:

Zack's parents met each other at the University of Toronto. His Dad and Mom went out with each other for six months, and then one winter, Etta saw her boyfriend standing outside her window singing love songs at the top of his voice through sleet and snow claiming that he wouldn't go away until he married her.

"I married him just to shut him up," Zack's mother once said "But I've met a lot of intelligent guys, and a few good and kind ones. Your father was the only one who was both,"

Etta Lane had becaome a singer since then and had recorded a hit country song that had earned her some money, which she had used to move her family into the country. The song was called 'South on 61' about a girl who goes back south to find her African roots.

But Etta Lane would never talk about her family. Ever.