Holes follows Stanley Yelnats, a boy who believes his family is cursed due to a mistake made by his great-great-grandfather many years ago. Stanley’s bad luck seems to prove this belief when he is wrongly accused of stealing a famous baseball player’s shoes and is sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention center in the Texas desert.

At Camp Green Lake, there is no lake—only a dry, cracked wasteland. Every day, the boys are forced to dig one hole five feet deep and five feet wide. The camp staff claim this builds character, but Stanley slowly realizes that the digging has another purpose. Stanley befriends other boys at the camp, including Zero, X-Ray, Armpit, and Magnet, and learns the unspoken rules of survival there.

As Stanley digs, the novel shifts between different timelines, revealing stories from the past that connect to the present. One storyline follows Kate Barlow, a schoolteacher who became a notorious outlaw after the man she loved was killed. Another tells the story of Stanley’s great-great-grandfather, Elya Yelnats, whose broken promise may have caused the family curse. These past events slowly begin to explain why Camp Green Lake exists and why the boys are digging holes.

When Stanley finds a strange object while digging, the camp staff become unusually interested, confirming that they are searching for something hidden beneath the ground. Meanwhile, Zero runs away into the desert after being mistreated. Instead of staying safe, Stanley chooses to follow him, breaking away from the camp’s control. Together, they survive extreme heat and exhaustion, relying on each other for survival.

Stanley and Zero discover that the place they escape to—God’s Thumb—connects directly to Stanley’s family history. Eventually, they return to Camp Green Lake and uncover the buried treasure that the camp authorities have been searching for. The treasure belongs to Stanley’s family, and its discovery finally breaks the Yelnats curse.

By the end of the novel, Camp Green Lake is shut down, Stanley is proven innocent, and both Stanley and Zero are given a fresh start. The story concludes by tying together all timelines, showing that the past and present are deeply connected and that choices—both good and bad—can echo across generations.