Dead End in Norvelt ~ Jack Gantos

Dead End in Norvelt is the fictionalized autobiography of young Jack Gantos — and many other small town boys of the post-WWII era. It is summer and Jack is grounded for shooting off his father's Japanese rifle (accidentally) and plowing up his mother's community-feeding garden (on orders from his father). Jack only gets out of the house (and out of digging a fictitious underground bunker for his father) to serve as the writing instrument of Miss Volker, the town's self-appointed obit writer and historian and official medical examiner.

And there seem to be quite a number of obituaries these days.

In fact the original residents of Norvelt, a town founded and designed by Eleanor Roosevelt, seem to be in a rush to die off and leave the town to the next generation. So Jack gets called to Miss Volker's house with alarming regularity.

Miss Volker feels it is her duty to send off the original residents, issuing the official certification of death and then writing the synopsis of their life. Each obituary is a celebration of the deceased, and each also contains a tangential history lesson to absorb. Jack, who loves historical adventure tales, decides that this job is almost as good as freedom.

Several subplots highlight the concerns of post-WWII boys. There is a motorcycle gang that blows into town for revenge, and a baseball team that will be one player short for the duration of the grounding. There are financial woes and rules and chores. There is a new drive-in theater that is just visible from Jack's backyard. And there is the air-strip that Jack's rather lunatic father is building (hence necessitating the garden's removal) to accommodate the plane that he is hiding in the garage.

It is a rather rose-colored picture. The many references to Commies and Japs in the story are toned down and viewed from both sides. The endemic race issues of the era are also portrayed in rather rosy light. And the notion of progress overwhelming preservation is played out as farce with the original houses of Norvelt being dismantled and transported to a better faring Roosevelt-founded town, an enterprise funded by Norvelt's mortician.

Ultimately, the rash of old ladies passing through the morgue is seen as foul play. Jack, who spends quite a bit of time handling poison, wonders if he will be suspected. Then Miss Volker is arrested and incarcerated in her own house.

The conclusion is as daffy as the mind of Jack Gantos could conceive. But in the end, Jack is ungrounded and finally gets to play baseball.