Hole in My Life

Read the most by: boys and girls

From the Newbery Award-winning author of Dead End in Norvelt, this is a memoir about becoming a writer the hard way. A Printz Honor and Sibert Honor book.



In the summer of 1971, Jack Gantos was an aspiring writer looking for adventure, cash for college tuition, and a way out of a dead-end job. For ten thousand dollars, he recklessly agreed to help sail a sixty-foot yacht loaded with a ton of hashish from the Virgin Islands to New York City, where he and his partners sold the drug until federal agents caught up with them. For his part in the conspiracy, Gantos was sentenced to serve up to six years in prison.

In Hole in My Life, this prizewinning author of over thirty books for young people confronts the period of struggle and confinement that marked the end of his own youth. On the surface, the narrative tumbles from one crazed moment to the next as Gantos pieces together the story of his restless final year of high school, his short-lived career as a criminal, and his time in prison.

But running just beneath the action is the story of how Gantos--once he was locked up in a small, yellow-walled cell--moved from wanting to be a writer to writing, and how dedicating himself more fully to the thing he most wanted to do helped him endure and ultimately overcome the worst experience of his life.

This title has Common Core connections.

Jack Gantos is an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of books for readers of all ages, including Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, a National Book Award Finalist, and Joey Pigza Loses Control, a Newbery Honor book. His book The Trouble in Me is an autobiographical novel about a fourteen-year-old Jack Gantos, and his book Dead End in Novelt won the Newbery Medal, the Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction.

Praise for Hole in My Life:

"A memoir, by turns harrowing and hilarious, about a huge mistake." --Miami Herald

"His account is remarkably free of both self-pity and self-censorship. . . . This is a tale of courage and redemption, proving that a bad start in life does not have to lead to a bad life story." --The New York Times Book Review

"Gantos really is Everyman, but an Everyman who has landed himself into a deeper pit than most. What separates Gantos is the determination that took him out of his dreams and into a successful life as a writer. Those writerly skills are in full evidence here, in this thoughtful and provocative memoir as valuable to those who have never heard of Gantos as to those who have read all of his books." --Hyde Park Review of Books

"The ultimate cautionary tale." --Smithsonian

"This true tale of the worst year in the author's life will be a big surprise for his many fans. . . .This is a story of mistakes, dues, redemption, and finally success at what he always wanted to do: write books." --Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

Awards for Hole in My Life:
School Library Best Books of the Year
Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library
Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year
Michael L. Printz Award - Honor
ALA Best Books for Young Adults
NYPL Books for the Teen Age
ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults
American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon Award
Massachusetts Children's Book Award
American Library Association Notable Children's Books
Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List
American Library Association Popular Paperbacks for Young Readers
Parents' Choice Award Winner
Robert F. Sibert Award - Honor
School Library Journal Best Books of the Year
ALA Notable Children's Books
Booklist Editors' Choice