Gantos, J. (2002). Hole in My Life. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
ISBN-13: 9780374430894
•Plot Summary
Jack Gantos has been in prison for a year when this autobiography begins, and he details how he spends much of his time afraid of the violence around him. His life before he was in prison, did not prepare him for the brutality he sees daily, especially as he works as part of an emergency medical team. His father had told him stories about the violent lives of people in his hometown, but those stories had been nothing to him beyond reasons for wondering. At nineteen, he was still in high school, but his father moved the family from Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Jack cannot speak Spanish, and therefore finish his Senior year, so his parents send him back to Florida to live with another family. The Bacons are poor, and glad of the money Jack will bring into the house, until he also brings loud music, friends, and his drinking habits into the house as well. When he becomes sick through several of the rooms, the Bacon kick him out, and Jack goes to live in a nearby hotel. He lives there for the entire school year, taken care of by the landlady, Davy. Jack manages to keep his job, although he begins smoking marijuana, and is accepted to the University of Florida in Gainesville. His father's company had not been doing well, so he moved the family again, this time to St.Croix in the Virgin Islands. Jack decides not to attend college for awhile, and tell his father he will come help him out with the company. In the meantime, his friend from high school (Tim Scanlon) gets together with Jack, and the two plan a scheme to sell hydroponically grown marijuana from Tallahassee. When Tim disappears, Jack decides to take a road trip like Jack Kerouac, and visits the homes of Earnest Hemingway, Tennessee William, and Elizabth Bishop. He is writing in his notebook again, a practice where he writes down details from books he has enjoyed, quotes, descriptions or even his own story ideas. Jack does not, however, write his own stories, and soon learns that Tim was taken by the police. He is with his parents, and the police have confiscated the weed. Jack then leaves for St. Croix, almost immediately a part of the drug culture. The police there are too busy inspecting oil tankers from the Middle East, to have time doing the same for boats that might be carrying drugs, so the culture is thriving. Or at least, this is true until rising racial tensions cause a shooting, and there is a mass exodus of whites from the island. With Jack's father no longer having any business, the two are only making palates for people use for shipping off the island, and Jack makes a deal with a drug dealer to accompany a shipment of marijuana from St. Croix to Manhattan, for $10k. Along with his shipmate, an insane Englishman named Hamilton, Jack tries to sail. Neither of them know how to sail a ship, and only after three days of practice are they able to leave the island behind, even then running aground at one point after the first day out to sea. Hamilton tries to humiliate Jack all the time, begins talking to himself, and walks around in the nude constantly. Jack has brought along books of famous ships and voyages, such as Treasure Island, Heart of Darkness, and the Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy. More than anything else though, the two get stoned, and Jack works on a journal in an old leather book he finds below deck. Small entries are included for each day, as well as explanations of how Jack and Hamilton continue to spend their time. After running low on fuel, the two encounter a Japanese fishing trawler, and Jack exchanges some of their rum for fuel. In return, the Japanese sailors send him back with sake, but Hamilton has let the boat drift away. Jack jumps into the water to catch up, and the height being more than he had expected, he has the air knocked out of him by the impact. He sinks, nearly drowning, but manages to swim to the surface. Several days pass in a storm, and the two end up accidentally in military waters, though they are escorted right back out again by the Coast Guard. They run aground at Cape May, NJ and attempt to contact Rik, without success. Finally, the two arrive at a marina in Queens, and Rik comes to move two hundred and fifty pounds of the hash from the boat, to "a guy named Jerome". Hamilton has become more paranoid, and thinks they are being followed, but nothing happens after two weeks of staying at the Chelsea Hotel. Jack, now paranoid as well, becomes obsessed with picking the acne that has developed under his skin. It isn't until then that the FBI arrive, and Hamilton points the finger, although Jack manages to escape, hide in a movie theatre, and eventually make it back to Davy's motel in Ft. Lauderdale. When Jack calls his father, he finds out that the FBI has had the family under surveillance, and his father insists that he contact a lawyer already found for him- Al E. Newman. Rik and Hamilton had already been taken into custody ahead of Jack, ratting him out, and the FBI have all the photos Jack took of the trip, the operation, and even one taken of him as evidence. Newman assures him that if he pleads guilty on one count of conspiracy to distribute, Jack will get off easy, maybe even just probation. Jack, not so sure, begins to read novels about prisons and follows the Attica Prison uprising on television. Once Jack is sentenced to a 5010B, he is put into prison. He's propositioned and warned the first night, and returns to his cell after a bathroom run to discover that his new fellow inmate was raped by multiple men the night before. Soon after, Jack is transferred to a federal prison in Ashland, KY, receiving a yellow cell in part of the hospital, because has gotten a case of head lice. He's safe from attack and rape, but tormented by the color, even in his sleep. After a week, Jack is given some paper, an unsharpened pencil, and a few discarded books to read. He picks up The Brothers Karamazov first, and begins writing his journal entries between the lines, including one about the trio of members from the Muslim Brotherhood who visit him to offer a way to prove his trust-prove he wants to improve race relations by meeting them in the bathroom during movie night, and drop his pants for them. As he is being released from the hospital, Jack asks if they need any additional aid, since he has experience as a hospital volunteer. The last X-ray technician had just tried to make an escape, so Jack is allowed to join the team, and keep his private cell. Among some of the more interesting things he encounters: an Elvis look-alike busted for selling fake Elvis memorabilia, a female administrative assistant who quits after her chest X-rays are stolen and recovered from the men's room, and a guy who needs an enema because his wife passed him hash that he hasn't passed. Finally, after serving one hundred and fifty days, Jack is able to speak to the parole board. They don't have all the facts straight, and his case worker (Mr. Wilcox) is the sort who falls asleep, so Jack must wait another two years to meet with them again. He uses the time to look out his call window, recalling events from his childhood, and writing them down in his journal. After a few more months, Jack receives a new case worker, Mr. Casey. The two fix on a plan, and Jack is accepted into Graham Junior College in New York. Fifteen months after being placed in prison, Jack is released. As conditions of his release, he had to have a stable residence in New York, and a job. His father arranges for him to live with a woman in Little Italy, and her son pays Jack to deliver Christmas trees. When the season was over, Jack started college, and ironically got a job as a campus security guard.
•Critical Evaluation
A basic, informative look into the lives of inmates in federal prison. Jack managed to have a better time of it than many do, however, mainly because of his hospital training. It's never entirely clear if he is sorry for that he did, and he unfortunately lost the Karamazov journal, because the novel was prison property.
•Reader’s Annotation
Several instances of a graphic nature.
•Information about the author
Since his release from prison, Jack Gantos has written over ten novels. He developed the M.F.A. programs in Children’s Book Writing at both Emerson College and Vermont College. Interestingly, the biography page on his web site does not mention the events detailed in this autobiography.
•Genre
Autobiography
•Curriculum Ties
Social Science
Journaling
English
•Booktalking Ideas
Teens in prison, journaling to inspire creative writing, drugs and the court system
•Reading Level/Interest Age
Grades 10-12/Ages 15-19
•Challenge Issues
The entire content of this book could be considered suitable for challenging, but Gantos account is real, not a work of fiction, and therefore good at showing teens what can happen by making the wrong choices when it comes to drugs.
•Why did you include this book in you’re the titles you selected?
I enjoy biographies, and was interested in reading about how a teen that ends up in jail turns things around so that he can survive the ordeal, then go on to write.
