The Ordinary White Boy by Brock Clarke

This is for all of the ordinary white boys and white girls out there! Those who basically wile away the hours feeling, well, sort of schlubby.

Yeah, Lamar Kerry's world is pretty bland. He's from a small town in upstate New York where people aren't all that receptive to change. Employed by his father's newspaper as a reporter, Lamar's first legitimate assignment is to cover the mysterious disappearance of the local jeweler, who also happens to be the only person of color in town. Now, in a small community, this could be motivation enough for murder. At first, Lamar is reluctant to commit himself to the case. After all, it might take too much time away from his fabulous lifestyle, which is basically lying around on the couch drinking beer and thinking about what a waste of space he is. Lamar flirts with a period of intense self-introspection that spurs him on and pivots him forward into the arms of certain uncertainty.

Thinking that he can actually make a worthwhile contribution to society by cracking the case of the missing jeweler, he becomes obsessed with the facts, or lack of them, surrounding the case. In the course of tracking down sources and leads, Lamar encounters hypocrisy and small-town ignorance brought on by a lack of acceptance and understanding on the part of the local residents. And of course, as he broadens his search for clues, Lamar discovers that the attitudes of those populating the surrounding rural communities are pretty much the same. The missing jeweler becomes more and more real to Lamar as the days pass and the case becomes a race with time. It is Lamar's desire to bring the man back alive; however, after a certain amount of time passes, he realizes that that is a rather unrealistic expectation.

The jeweler goes from missing to presumed dead. Still, Lamar won't let it go until he finds out exactly what happened to the man. He does this not only for the sake of the victim's family, but for himself also. His search leads him unapologetically into the heart of racism in his community.

In the process of solving this mystery, Lamar begins to gradually unravel the schlubbiness of his own character and starts asking himself all the right/wrong questions. This intense personal struggle ultimately enables Lamar to grow from being an ordinary white boy into an ordinary white man, with some pretty extraordinary qualities.

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