From the author of the Man Booker longlisted The Underground Railroad Benji spends most of the year as one of the only black kids at an elite prep school in Manhattan going to roller disco bar mitzvahs desperately trying to find his place in the social hierarchy Then he spends his summers in the African-American community of Sag Harbor on Long Island & is just as confused He's way behind on the latest handshakes baffled by new slang & his attempts to be cool & meet girls are constantly thwarted by his extremely awkward inner geek braces & a badly cut Afro It's the summer of 1985 & Benji is determined that this is the summer when things will change & he'll fit in For starters he'll be reinvented as ' Ben' When that doesn't catch on it's another summer of the perpetual mortification that is teenage existence