Dead End In Norvelt

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, graphic violence, and death.

Jack Gantos is 11 years old, and he’s done with school for the summer. He plays with the items that his father—Dad—brought back from the war. As a member of the United States Navy, Dad fought in the Pacific theater of World War II, battling the Japanese. After finding a bunker of dead Japanese soldiers, Dad took their items. Dad brought back binoculars, a Japanese flag, a sword, and a sniper rifle.

On the cornfield his mother—Mom—created, Jack looks through the binoculars. He sees his neighbor Miss Volker’s roof, his school, and the Viking drive-in movie theater. Jack lives in Norvelt, a community in Pennsylvania that the federal government created during the Great Depression to help people without much money. The town got its name from Eleanor Roosevelt, who was married to then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Mom doesn’t want Jack to play with Dad’s war items, and she wants Jack to help Miss Volker in the mornings. Mom’s younger brother, Will, has a pony, War Chief. Will painted the pony so that it looked like an Indigenous soldier.