Dead End in Norvelt

I first became acquainted with Jack Gantos (the author) when I read his book Joey Pigza Loses Control (2001 Newbery Honor) in high school. I specifically remember Joey because he pitched on a baseball team and was known for not leaving his mound under any circumstances. I was playing on a softball team during that time and our pitcher was exactly the same way. I even read an excerpt from the book during a softball party and everyone thought I was reading a description of our pitcher, Kim.

Dead End in Norvelt is somewhat autobiographical, but some parts are clearly fabricated. Gantos describes a summer in his hometown of Norvelt, Pennsylvania (named after EleaNOR RooseVELT), the entirety of which he spends grounded. I think I spent most of the book aggravated by the injustice of Jack’s grounding. In the first chapters, he mows down his mom’s corn plants at the express command of his father. Jack’s mom then grounds him for the entire summer. Wha?! He even tries to defend himself by explaining that his dad made him do it, but she just says something about how he’ll be in trouble, too. Clearly, there are significant communication issues his parents need to work out and I couldn’t let that go for the rest of the book. I found the main plot only mildly interesting and Jack’s constant nosebleeds annoying rather than endearing. There was one part toward the beginning when an old woman who Jack befriends is melting wax on her hands to soothe her arthritis and Jack, ignorant of this process, is under the impression that she is melting off and eating her own skin. I giggled through the entire scene, the ending of which I included here:

“Now peel it off,” she ordered.

“Peel what off?”  I asked.

“The sticky stuff on my arms,” she said impatiently, and then she held a rounded stump up to her mouth, bit off a cooked chunk, and spit it into the trash.

I felt faint. I staggered back a few steps and by then my nose was spewing like an elephant bathing himself. “Please . . . Miss Volker,” I said with my voice quavering. “Please don’t eat your own flesh.” Mom didn’t know Miss Volker had gone insane, and I knew I would go insane too if I had to watch her cannibalize her own body down to the white boiled bones.

“You’re bleeding all over the floor,” she said, turning her attention toward me as if she wanted to wash her flesh meal down with my blood. “Let me have a look at you.” Then she reached toward me with her deformed stumps and touched my face and at that moment I yelped out loud and dropped over dead.