Arnold Spirit Jr. lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation and attends a school for Indians. Here they beat him and call him names. For what? Simply because he was born sick and different from the others. So Arnold sits at home - and draws caricatures and caricatures in response to everything that happens in his life. But drawing is also an opportunity to break out of the reservation, where all the Indians have long given up and found solace at the bottom of a bottle. Arnold wants a better life and decides: he needs to take a risk and go to the Reardan School, where he can get a good education and become one of the people. But there he will be the only Indian among the whites... Will he be able to become one of the strangers? In this semi-autobiographical novel, Sherman Alexie, a Native American, told the story of his childhood: what it was like to grow up on an impoverished Indian reservation, and then pluck up the courage to go to school for whites to become something more than a poor Indian boy. For this honest novel, full of bitter humor and hope, Sherman Alexie received worldwide recognition and the US National Book Award in the 2007 Children's Literature category.