In the summertime of 1971, Jack Gantos was an aspiring writer in need of adventure, college cash, and a way out of a dead-end job. For ten thousand dollars, he recklessly decided to help sail a sixty-foot yacht loaded with hashish in the Virgin Islands to New York City, where he and his companions sold the medication until federal agencies finally swept up to them in a bust on the Chelsea Hotel. For his component in the conspiracy, the twenty-year-old Gantos was sentenced to offer to six years in prison..Read More on the subject of Hole IN MY OWN Life

In Hole in my own Existence, this acclaimed writer of a lot more than 30 books for teenagers confronts the period of struggle and confinement that marked the finish of his own youth. On the top, the narrative tumbles in one intense moment to another as Gantos parts together the storyplot of his restless final year of high school, his short-lived profession being a smuggler, and his time in jail. But running just beneath the action is the tale of how Gantos-once he found himself locked up in a small, yellow-walled cell-moved from wanting to be a writer to writing, and exactly how this newfound commitment helped him withstand the worst experience of his life.