City and LaVander tie in the state sentence competition, setting up their showdown at the national contest.

City refuses to leave the stage at the national contest and delivers an angry, vitriolic speech on live television.

LaVander wins the contest with the word 'chitterlings' but is immediately disqualified; a white boy from New Orleans takes the prize.

Angry at City's televised outburst, Mama puts him on a bus to stay with Grandma in Melahatchie.

Grandma chases City around the yard and beats him with a switch to punish him for embarrassing the family on television.

City breaks into Grandma's shed and finds Sooo Sad lying on the ground, covered in blood and sawdust.

Reverend Cherry dunks City three times in the baptism pool; City surfaces and runs screaming through the church.

City and LaVander find the hole in the Magic Woods, climb inside, and City begins reading Long Division aloud.

City and Shalaya travel through the hole in the Night Time Woods and arrive in 2013, where City meets Baize Shephard.

City, Shalaya, and Evan Altshuler join forces and travel through the hole together, arriving in 1964.

Klansmen knock City to the ground at the Freedom School; Shalaya and Evan burst inside to rescue him.

In 1964, a woman's drunk husband emerges from a house and City recognizes him as his late grandfather, Lerthon Coldson.

Baize shows City and Shalaya a photo of her parents, and the group realizes City and Shalaya are those parents who die in 2005.

City decides to help Evan change the past, knowing the choice means losing Shalaya and Baize forever.

City takes Baize's laptop into the hole and begins writing the story of Shalaya and Baize to bring them back.

City Coldson's rivalry with LaVander Peeler at their sentence competition erupts into a nationally televised outburst, sending City to Melahatchie to stay with his grandmother. After Grandma punishes him and he survives his baptism, City uncovers a wounded man in her shed and eventually descends into a magic hole in the woods with LaVander. In 1985, City's 14-year-old counterpart travels through the same hole with Shalaya Crump to 2013, where they meet Baize Shephard, then joins forces with the Jewish boy Evan Altshuler to travel to 1964. City and his friends are captured by Klansmen, discover City's grandfather Lerthon Coldson, and uncover the staggering truth that Baize is City and Shalaya's own daughter. Knowing that saving Evan's family means losing Shalaya and Baize, City makes the ultimate sacrifice and leaves Shalaya behind in 1964. He returns alone and begins writing their story into existence, hoping words can bring back everyone he loves.

The headline events that drive City's journey from rivalry to sacrifice.

Principal Reeves punishes City with a true-or-false test and allows him to borrow the book Long Division from her shelf.

LaVander's father drives the boys to the Coliseum and warns them the contest is far bigger than their personal rivalry.

City walks home alone after the contest, imagining how Grandma and Mama will react to seeing him on television.

On the bus to Melahatchie, City talks to girls who admire him, then white boys demand he perform for their camera.

City and Grandma shop at Walmart, where Grandma politely defers to a white woman's advice about a sale on wigs.

Uncle Relle takes City to the library, where City finds countless YouTube clips and comments about his televised outburst.

Grandma returns home covered in scrapes and dirt and refuses to tell City anything about what happened to her.

City and Shay go into the Magic Woods, where Shay switches City's genitals as part of a dare involving Baize Shephard.

City writes his will before his baptism, certain he will drown the way his grandfather once did.

Uncle Relle arrives at Grandma's house with LaVander, who reveals the contest judges had planned to let him win all along.

City and Shalaya grab Baize's laptop and phone from her porch in 2013 and flee back through the hole to 1985.

Separated from Shalaya and Evan in 1964, City walks to The County Co-Op and discovers it has segregated bathrooms.

City and Shalaya find Lerthon Coldson's body at the Freedom School and realize the Klan has killed him.

The friends strip the Klan sheet from Evan's brother and push him through the hole into another era.

City discovers Baize's completed true-or-false quiz inside a desk at The Lerthon Coldson Civil Rights Museum.

Before the contest, Principal Reeves hands City a mysterious book called Long Division, and LaVander's father warns the boys the competition carries weight far beyond their personal rivalry. After City's outburst, his journey to Melahatchie involves a humiliating bus ride, a quiet lesson in survival at Walmart, and a library trip where City confronts his growing internet notoriety. Back at Grandma's, City writes his will ahead of his baptism, faces a strange episode in the woods with Shay, and finally learns from LaVander just how deeply the contest was rigged against them both. In 1985, City and Shalaya steal Baize's technology and drag it back to their time, while City's solo trip inside the 1964 co-op exposes the brutal reality of Jim Crow segregation up close. The group eventually discovers Lerthon's body, sends a dangerous man through the hole to another era, and City emerges to find proof of Baize's existence waiting inside a civil rights museum.

The supporting scenes and secondary moments that fill out City's full story.

Backstage at the contest, LaVander tells City the judges always assigned City 'Black words' during the preliminary rounds.

Standing on stage, City realizes the judges deliberately chose the word 'niggardly' to humiliate him in front of the nation.

Watching the contest end on television, City realizes he can no longer hate LaVander and might actually love him.

Sooo Sad and a group of white men steal City's wave brush and kick him to the ground in Melahatchie.

City reads Long Division aloud to Sooo Sad in the shed, then tells Sooo Sad he is sorry and wants to help him.

Two deacons lead City to the front of the church, and he formulates the longest sentence of his life about racial pain.

Sooo Sad tells City that City's grandfather drowned while saving Sooo Sad as a young boy from the water.

Grandma drives the boys away from her house and admits she was wrong for keeping Sooo Sad captive in the shed.

Shalaya Crump tells City in 1985 that she can only love him if he agrees to help her change the future.

City meets Evan Altshuler in the Night Time Woods, who says he is from 1964 and needs help saving his family from the Klan.

After escaping the Freedom School, Shalaya tells City that one of the Klansmen who attacked them is Evan's own uncle.

Arriving at a house in 1964, Baize tells the woman inside that she is City and Shalaya's daughter, catching City off guard.

Shalaya runs out of the 1964 woods crying and tells City and Baize that the Klan has captured Evan.

Shalaya tears off a Klansman's white sheet at the Freedom School and reveals the disguised man underneath is Evan.

Mama Lara tells City that the same words used to erase people from memory can also be used to bring them back.

At the sentence contest, City first learns his words have been weaponized against him, then discovers a complicated love for his rival LaVander after watching him lose on television. In Melahatchie, white men rob City of his brush and his sense of safety, while a church visit and a series of encounters with Sooo Sad push City toward choosing compassion over revenge. Grandma's confession about Sooo Sad and her own guilt mark a turning point in how City understands justice and the weight of intergenerational trauma. In 1985, City's love for Shalaya Crump sets everything in motion, and meeting Evan Altshuler forces City and Shalaya to reckon with their own family's deep entanglement with history. The truth about Evan's uncle, Baize's parentage, and Evan's secret disguise arrive in rapid succession before Mama Lara delivers the novel's final revelation: that writing is the only force powerful enough to bring the people history has tried to erase back into existence.

The key decisions and discoveries that transform how City understands himself and his world.

Kiese Laymon

Novel

Fiction

Guide