This coming-of-age novel tells the story of a fatherless young boy's struggle to find his place in the world. Set in the 1980s and early 90s in the south-western coastal area of the United States, the novel is part hanging out, part road trip, and part alternate world. The vehicle for the story is an entity named Jacob who reaches Eric when Eric is quite young and depressed about his mother's sudden departure on a business trip during his birthday party, a party with only his mother and himself in attendance. Since they have recently moved, Eric has no friends. He has only the babysitter, who he is sure hates him. Jacob makes his appearance and entertains Eric, then enters his body to take up residence. Jacob mimics the role of imaginary friend. The novel jumps forward several years and Eric is in middle school. He has made a friend now, an older boy named Jones who is a bit of a delinquent. Dormant inside Eric for years, Jacob is brought back after an incident with Jones and now the two boys use the entity to commit small crimes, since Jacob has the power to make victims forget the recent past. Eric is torn because he wants to keep Jones as a friend but he doesn't like committing the robberies. A young woman, older than Jones but still in high school, witnesses one of the robberies and remembers enough to track the two down at school, demanding answers. Bernadette is popular, intelligent, and tough. Eric struggles to find metaphysical meaning, trying to understand the concepts of God and soul when faced with situations in the alternate world where he and his friends have become trapped. This well-imagined alternate world occupies about two-thirds of the book. The Blue Kangaroo is a sort of talking totem who helps Eric, albeit in a brusque and unsentimental manner. Readers of middle school age and below may need some parental guidance for a few plot situations and violent or sexual images.