Camp Green Lake is a juvenile detention center for boys in Texas. But there is no lake there. The boys spend every day digging five-foot holes in the dried lake bed. Stanley Yelnats, (yelnats is actually spelled Stanley backwards) a guy who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is sent there for stealing a pair of used sneakers that belonged to a famous baseball player. The sneakers had actually fallen off an overpass and landed on Stanley's head. Stanley believes his bad luck is due to a curse placed on his family after his great-great-grandfather, Elya Yelnats, stole a pig from a gypsy, Madame Zeroni. When Elya Yelnats was fifteen he was in love with an empty-headed girl. Madame Zeroni gave Elya a piglet to raise so that he could win the girl's hand by giving her father a fat pig. In exchange, Elya promised to take Madame Zeroni to a mountain to drink "where the water flows uphill." When the girl chooses not to marry Elya, he is so upset that he takes a boat to America, forgetting the promise he made to Madame Zeroni. The Yelnats family has had bad luck ever since. At Camp Green Lake Stanley is nicknamed "Caveman", this shows that for the first time in his life, Stanley has some acceptance from a peer group. He becomes stronger and more tenacious as he battles the harsh conditions of the field, digging through the desert heat. He becomes friends with a boy named Zero by agreeing to teach him to read in exchange for help digging. This upsets the other kids and causes a fight. Afterwards, Zero hits a councilor with a shovel and runs away into the desert. Zero is supposed to die out there and no one will care. Its records are destroyed. Deciding to help his friend, Stanley steals a water truck and goes looking for Zero. He drives the truck into a hole, gets out of the truck and runs away. He heads across the desert to a rock that resembles "God's thumb", the place where his grandfather, the first Stanley Yelnat, survived after being robbed by Kissin' Kate Barlow. One hundred and ten years before Green Lake was a beautiful place. where Katherine Barlow taught school. She fell in love with Sam, the onion man who sold onions as food and medicine in town.