Librarian's note: This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN13 9781450579773.
It's 1990 in suburban Chicago, and four high school "Krauts" enter their senior year. A new neighbor named Wally Black, an unstable, aloof, and misunderstood youth, finds his way into this circle of friends and changes the Krauts' last year together in unforeseen ways. When Wally is christened the "Fifth Kraut," a rift forms between these once inseparable German-American teenagers who begin living separate lives.
The Krauts are suburban white kids living a life of youthful ignorance with none of life's consequences. That is until one of them hatches a scheme to build a drug empire in little Elk Grove Village. Nine months later, one of them is dead.