Jack Gantos is the author of the coming-of-age, historical fiction novel Dead End in Norvelt (2011). The story is partly autobiographical, as it is based on Gantos’s experiences growing up in the early 1960s in Pennsylvania. Gantos gives the adolescent main character his name. Gantos has published many books for children and young readers including the illustrated Rotten Ralph series (1976-2011), a chapter book series about Joey Pigza (1998-2014), and the memoir Hole in My Life (2002). Dead End in Norvelt received much acclaim, including a Newbery Medal. The novel explores themes including The Force of Community, Confronting Death and Violence, and History as Guidance.

This guide refers to the 2011 Farrar, Straus Giroux e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of racism, animal cruelty and death, graphic violence, death by suicide, and death.

Language Note: The source material contains stigmatizing language regarding mental illness; this guide includes such language only in quotations.

Plot Summary

Jack Gantos is an 11-year-old boy who lives in Norvelt, Pennsylvania. The town was built during the Great Depression as a part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal program. The government bought the land and built houses for families without much money. Eleanor Roosevelt, who married President Roosevelt, pushed the government to make the houses decent instead of barebones. The town’s name pays tribute to Eleanor’s positive influence.

Jack’s father, referred to as “Dad,” fought in World War II. He was in the Pacific theater and battled the Japanese. Dad brought back many Japanese war items, including a Japanese sniper rifle, sword, and binoculars. Jack uses the binoculars to watch a war movie at the drive-in. Unaware that there’s a bullet in the gun, he aims the weapon at the screen and fires. The gunshot grabs the attention of his mother, referred to as “Mom,” and it makes Jack’s nose bleed. Whenever something exciting or upsetting occurs, Jack’s nose bleeds.

As punishment for firing the gun, Mom grounds Jack for an indeterminate period. Separately, she makes him help Miss Volker—the town’s nurse, medical examiner, and obituary writer. Miss Volker has arthritis in her hands, and to stimulate them, she heats them in a pot of hot wax. Jack thinks she’s burning her hands, and he faints. Regaining consciousness, Jack learns that he’ll be Miss Volker’s “scribe” for the summer. She’ll dictate the obituaries, and he’ll write them, type them, and deliver them to Mr. Greene—the publisher of the Norvelt News.

Miss Volker’s obituaries highlight the quirky, multilayered lives of the deceased—all of whom are older women. Miss Volker claims that she made an oath to Eleanor Roosevelt that she wouldn’t leave Norvelt until she documented the deaths of the original Norvelters. Miss Volker tells Jack that she wants the older women to die so that she can move on with her life.

Mr. Spizz also wants the older women to die. Mr. Spizz and Miss Volker once had a romantic relationship. Miss Volker claims that she can’t stand Mr. Spizz now, but Mr. Spizz remembers a promise that Miss Volker made: Once the older women died, she’d marry him. Mr. Spizz is the head of the Norvelt Association for the Public Good, and he comes across as a self-important busybody. He threatens to give Jack’s family a ticket for letting their weeds grow too high. After Jack cuts the weeds, he gives them a ticket because the weeds temporarily block the gutter.

Mom likes Norvelt and cultivated a cornfield so that she could sell the corn and use the money to make dinners for people who need food. Dad wants to leave Norvelt, and he orders Jack to destroy the cornfield so that he can build a runway for the World War II plane that he bought cheaply at an auction. As punishment for destroying the cornfield, Mom grounds Jack for the entire summer. She also criticizes Dad, who makes amends by buying her food that she can cook for the people who need meals.

Miss Volker uses Compound 1080 poison to combat the vermin in her basement. Mr. Spizz uses the poison to eliminate the vermin in the dump behind the gas station. Mr. Spizz asks Jack to buy 1080 for him, which makes Jack suspicious. At the hardware store, he must sign his name, and he sees the name of Oscar Huffer, who runs the town funeral parlor. Mr. Huffer buys the empty houses and moves them to another Roosevelt town—Eleanor, West Virginia. Unlike Norvelt, Eleanor is prospering, and Mr. Huffer plans to move his funeral business to Eleanor and turn Norvelt into Hufferville. Aside from the poison and atrophying town, Jack and the Norvelters worry about the violent motorcycle gang, the Hells Angels, who attack the town after Mr. Huffer unceremoniously cremates one of their members.

As the older women continue dying at an alarming rate, Mr. Greene, embracing the role of investigative journalist, summons the police and gets a scientific autopsy that reveals that someone is poisoning them. The police charge Miss Volker with murder, but Mr. Spizz confesses. He poisoned the women so that Miss Volker would marry him.

Jack’s parents realize that he didn’t put the bullet in the rifle. Mom’s brother left the bullet in the rifle because he used it to shoot deer. Ungrounded, Jack plays in a local baseball game, and Dad flies his plane in the outfield so that Jack can go for a ride in it. In the air, they drop water balloons on people. Realizing that he’s scaring people—just as he scared people by accidentally shooting the rifle—Jack stops. He has learned his lesson, and he won’t repeat history.