Please Ignore Vera Dietz

In Amy Sarig King’s young adult contemporary novel Please Ignore Vera Dietz (2010), high school senior Vera Dietz struggles to cope with the death of her former best friend, Charlie Kahn, who died the night a local pet shop burned down. Vera knows information that will clear Charlie’s name of the arson, but feelings of guilt and anger drive Vera to keep her knowledge secret. As the novel progresses and Vera navigates challenges of alcoholism, abandonment, and loss, she grows in self-confidence and the ability to express her emotions. Please Ignore Vera Dietz won a Michael L. Printz Honor Book award in 2011 for literary excellence in young adult literature.

Vera is one of the first-person narrators in Please Ignore Vera Dietz. Her father, Ken Dietz, and her friend Charlie (“The Dead Kid”) also chime into the story, sharing information and memories. The town landmark, a glowing red pagoda, also speaks. The novel flows backward and forward in time, with the multiple narrators building a layered description of Vera and Charlie’s relationship.

Vera harbors a lot of anger and resentment toward Charlie. The two have been inseparable friends since childhood. They built a treehouse together, hung out at the Master Oak tree, spent summers playing Uno, and could talk to each other about anything. Vera doesn’t have a lot of friends except for Charlie and prefers it that way—she likes being “invisible.” When the two reach high school, however, things begin to change. Charlie starts smoking more and getting detention. He hangs out with a group of new friends, the “Detentionheads” as Vera calls them, that includes the mean-spirited Jenny Flick.



Queen of the Detentionheads, Jenny wears black, smokes, uses so much eyeliner that she looks like a “slutty linebacker raccoon,” and is an outright mythomaniac. Charlie falls for Jenny, who wastes no time telling Charlie lies about Vera. Jenny destroys Vera and Charlie’s friendship.

As the story opens at Charlie’s funeral, Vera wrestles with her anger. Even though she once loved him, Vera hates Charlie for abandoning her twice: first by screwing over their friendship and then by dying. She’s not sure she can come forward with what she knows: that Jenny Flick is the one who burned down the pet store. Vera’s dad has taught her for years to “just ignore” other peoples’ business. Vera also feels guilty about keeping silent about the domestic violence taking place in Charlie’s home.

Vera’s family has its own issues. Her mother, Sindy, abandoned the family when Vera was twelve, running off to Las Vegas with the family podiatrist. Vera knows her mother got pregnant with her when she was seventeen, and Vera fears becoming like her.



Vera’s dad, Ken, is a recovering alcoholic. He shares that alcoholism runs in his family. His own father left him when he was three and he himself dropped out of school and became an alcoholic. Ken believes in being completely truthful with Vera. So much so, that he reveals Sindy was a stripper. Ken tries hard to fill the void that Sindy created but is afraid he’s failing Vera as a single parent.

A few months after the funeral, Vera is working forty hours a week as a pizza delivery technician, while attending school full time. Her dad thinks working hard builds character, and it will help her get her mind off Charlie. Vera has her own way of coping: drinking from the flask of vodka she keeps under the seat of her car when she needs to numb her emotions. It also helps when she needs to keep away the thousand dead Charlie ghosts that are following her around, urging her to clear his name.

Charlie explains that he has also made some bad choices. He’s been selling his used underwear to a local pervert named John. He recognizes that he has some of the same issues as his abusive father. Charlie reveals that he loved Vera, and regrets everything that happened, but says he had to push her away to “save Vera from myself.” Charlie thought he could never be as classy as Vera, which led to feelings of helplessness and anger; those feelings are what drew him to Jenny Flick. Charlie deliberately hurts Vera, informing students at school that her mother was a stripper.



On the night of the fire, Charlie calls Vera. He tells her that he broke up with Jenny Flick and is worried that she is going to do something terrible. He asks Vera to meet him at the pet shop. Despite her anger at Charlie, Vera knows she still loves him. She goes to the store and sees Jenny Flick pouring gasoline around the store, and inside animal cages. Jenny plans to frame Charlie, who isn’t there. Vera leaves and calls Charlie who cryptically says he is hiding; she muses that maybe he belongs in jail. Charlie tells Vera he will leave her an explanation where only she can find it. The next morning Charlie’s body is laying in his front yard: he’d been pushed from a car and is dead from either alcohol poisoning or suffocating on his own vomit.

Vera is finally emotionally able to accept her feelings about Charlie. She goes to the Master Oak and finds a series of notes from Charlie. Vera learns that Charlie and Jenny had been making videos together to sell to John the pervert, but Charlie wanted to stop. He broke up with Jenny, who vowed revenge. Vera and her father take the evidence to the police. Vera achieves closure with Charlie’s death and her mother’s abandonment and grows in her relationship with her father. She tells Ken that he more than filled the void left by their mother, saying, “The void was inside her. When she left, she took it with her.” Vera and Ken take a road trip to celebrate their new feelings of freedom. Vera exults that she has changed from “invisible Vera Dietz to invincible Vera Dietz.”