In the fall of 1883 Professor William Waterbury Sherman, weary of 40 years of teaching arithmetic, sets forth from San Francisco on a balloon expedition. What happens in the treee weeks between that day and the day he is rescued from the Atlantic Ocean makes up this unbleievable tale.

In claiming as his own the magnificent black pearl that he finds, a sixteen-year-old youth enrages the sea devil who legend says is its owner.

A young Navajo girl recounts the events of 1864 when her tribe was forced to march to Fort Sumner as prisoners of the white soldiers.

"Enter the hilarious world of ten-year-old Kenny and his family, the Weird Watsons of Flint, Michigan. There's Momma, Dad, little sister Joetta, Kenny, and Bryon, who's thirteen and an "official juvenile delinquent." When Momma and Dad decide it's time for a visit to Grandma, Dad comes home with the amazing Ultra-Glide, and the Watsons set out on a trip like no other. They're heading south. They're going to Birmingham, Alabama, toward one of the darkest...

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.