Rule of the Bone

Rule Of The Bone is a 1995 novel by Russell Banks. It is a bildungsroman about the 14-year-old American narrator, Chappie, later dubbed Bone (named for a tattoo that he gets), who, after having dropped out of school, turns to the guidance of a Rastafarian Jamaican migrant worker. The novel is split into two halves, the first of which concerns his family struggles in America, and the second takes place in Jamaica. Some critics, such as Michiko Kakutani for the New York Times, describe the book as descending from other novels about rebellious teens, such as J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The book contains frank descriptions of drug use such as ganja and sexual abuse by his...