He wants Genie to take him for a walk the following night so he can get acclimated to the outside again.

Granpop refuses to let Genie touch the weapon, but he does ask Genie to help him with something else. Genie can smell the liquor he has been drinking and is surprised to see him taking apart a revolver and putting it back together. When he goes downstairs to use the bathroom, he discovers Grandpop sitting at the kitchen table. As a storm rages outside, Genie cannot sleep. He vows to find some way to repair the truck. Grandma puts on a brave face, but Genie knows she is deeply hurt. On their first evening without their parents, Genie accidently breaks a wheel off of a treasured model truck that used to belong to Wood, his uncle who had been killed serving in the military. They meet Samantha, the dog, and must scoop up her poop and fling it out into the woods surrounding the house. The city boys learn how to tend her garden of sweet peas. The next day Grandma puts Genie and Ernie to work around the house. Her father, Crab, is an old friend of their grandpop’s. Her mother is a hypochondriac and seldom leaves the house.

She makes earrings out of old bottle caps and sells them at the flea market. Genie and Ernie explore the woods around their grandparents’ house and meet a girl named Tess. He keeps a notebook filled with the questions he wants answered when he can get access to Google again. Genie feels a little lost without the internet, something his grandparents’ house does not have. Tensions run high in the house until their parents leave. He is shocked to learn that his grandpop is blind from glaucoma. Genie, always observant and never without questions, hopes they do not wind up getting a divorce.ĭue to his dad’s deep-rooted anger toward his father, Genie has not seen his grandparents since he was a baby, although they talk monthly on the phone. They leave the boys with their grandparents for a month, in hopes that they can salvage their crumbling marriage. Their parents have driven through the night from their home in Brooklyn to the backwoods of Virginia. Genie, 11, and his soon-to-be 14-year-old brother, Ernie, had not thought they would spend the summer in the country scooping dog poop, but that is what they end up doing.

As brave as you are