“I’m 14 years old, and I’ve been to 42 funerals,” Arnold says. “If you want to get all biological, then you’d have to say that I was an exciting addition to the Reardan gene pool.”) Meanwhile, his father’s best friend is shot and killed, and his sister dies in a trailer fire. Arnold figures out that he’s smarter than most of the white kids, and wins the heart of a white girl named Penelope. When Reardan plays Wellpinit High in basketball, the Indians rain so much abuse on Arnold that a race riot nearly breaks out. What he can’t win back is the love of his neighbors at home. “And I don’t mean ‘kill’ as in ‘metaphor.’ I mean ‘kill’ as in ‘beat me to death.’” (The comedian in Alexie pops up as often as the poet.) Arnold’s toughness soon earns him their respect, though, as well as a spot on the varsity basketball team. “I was afraid those monsters were going to kill me,” he says. Early on, Arnold fears being beaten up by the jocks. He’s the only Indian - if you don’t count the school mascot. He transfers to Reardan High, 22 miles away, a gleaming campus full of wealthy white kids, with a computer room and chemistry labs.

“The Absolutely True Diary” tracks Arnold’s year of getting out. “That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.”

“My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from,” Arnold says. When Arnold cracks open his geometry textbook, he finds his mother’s name written on the flyleaf. “My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people,” Arnold explains, “all the way back to the very first poor people.” The kid was born with 10 too many teeth, so he gets them pulled - all in a single day, because the Indian Health Service pays for major dental work only once a year. To say that life is hard on the Spokane rez doesn’t begin to touch it. I keep flipping back to re-read the best scenes and linger over Ellen Forney’s cartoons. Recently nominated for a National Book Award, this is a gem of a book. “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is Alexie’s first foray into the young adult genre, and it took him only one book to master the form. Arnold’s creator, Sherman Alexie, grew up on the Spokane Reservation in tiny Wellpinit, Wash., and made his name as a poet before expanding into short stories, novels, screenplays, film directing and stand-up comedy.

If that line has an unexpected poetry to it, that’s because it was written by a poet. “I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods,” he says, “and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.” When he goes outside he gets teased and beaten, so he spends a lot of time in his room drawing cartoons. Arnold is a 14-year-old high school freshman. His head and body look like Sputnik on a toothpick. is the geekiest Indian on the Spokane Reservation.

The part time indian