In Louis Sachar’s young-adult novel Holes, Camp Green Lake is located in Texas.
The story takes place at a juvenile detention camp in a dry, fictional area of Texas. The boys are forced to dig large holes every day, supposedly to build character. The camp’s name is misleading because the lake disappeared long before the novel begins.
Sachar published Holes in 1998. Its plot connects the present-day camp with the history of Stanley Yelnats’s family and the outlaw Kissin’ Kate Barlow. Those linked timelines explain why the Warden is searching the lakebed.
Readers sometimes confuse the fictional Camp Green Lake with a real Texas lake. The setting is invented, although its climate, landscape, and frontier history draw on the American Southwest. The 2003 film adaptation also presents the camp as being in Texas.