I recently finished 'Rule of the Bone,' by Russel Banks... really really amazingly good book!

It is the best Banks novel I've read yet, and I don't say that lightly... It's about finding your way in the world -- coming of age with all the cards stacked against you, and stumbling towards something better that you can't name but hope is somehow out there. Banks does a beautiful job of drawing characters that are wholly believable, while challenging traditional expectations of good and bad, moral and immoral... his characters are both/and, not either/or -- just like most folks in real life. When the teen protagonist *finally* (after a lifetime of abuse and exploitation) comes in contact with someone who honestly cares for him, someone to look up to and see the kind of person he'd like to be, it's this kind old homeless illegal-alien Rastafarian pot-dealing guy, who won't eat 'deaders' (plants only!) and sets up an makeshift organic garden from dumpstered/ shoplifted seeds, in the junkyard where they sleep... 

I can not say enough good things about this book... I loved Banks' writing in 'Continental Drift' and 'Affliction' -- but this one takes the cake. Along with 'American Rust' (Philipp Meyer), one of the best coming-of-age stories since Huck Finn. Five stars!