Rat Life

Prolific children’s author Tedd Arnold published his first young adult novel, Rat Life, in 2007. The novel is a lightly fictionalized version of Arnold’s own childhood in the city of Elmira, New York—disguised as Elmore in Rat Life. In the novel, a teen protagonist experiences a tumultuous summer after befriending a slightly older boy whose home life is dysfunctional to the point of violence and tragedy. Although the mystery at the heart of the novel is only one of the propelling impulses of the plot, Rat Life won the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Fiction.

In the fall of 1972, 14-year-old Todd Anthony is a little put out by his mundane existence in the seemingly boring upstate New York town of Elmore. Todd is an aspiring writer, but so far, his main pieces of fiction have been stories about farting aliens to amuse his friends. His down-at-the-heels family owns and operates a motel in town, so his free time is spent making beds, cleaning rooms, and doing basic maintenance chores there. He is also responsible for watching over his grandmother, whose mental acuity is declining thanks to dementia.

When the novel opens, something potentially exciting has come across Todd’s radar: police have found a dead body floating down the Chemanga River. It’s a strange development in the otherwise sleepy Elmore, but Todd is only mildly interested. His thoughts are occupied with more immediate things: how to get a paying job, whether to take up the challenge to write something without poop jokes in it issued by a teacher who sees some value in his writing, what to do in order to cope with his grandmother’s mental health.



One day, Todd is out riding his rusty, rundown bike when he sees a puppy walking in the middle of the street. He picks up the little dog and tries to calm it down, but just then, a huge truck roars by and startles the small animal. The dog wiggles in Todd’s arms, nips at his hand, confusing Todd just enough to leap out of his arms and run directly into the path of the truck. Todd watches the dog get run over—but the true horror of the moment is that the puppy isn’t dead. Its back half has been flattened, and it is suffering deeply. Todd meets a slightly older teenager who introduces himself as Rat and tells Todd that they have to put the puppy out of its misery. They use a rock to do so.

A deeply distraught Todd spends weeks in emotional turmoil after this incident. At the same time, after he is unable to find the puppy’s owner to confirm that the dog didn’t have rabies, Todd has to go to the hospital for a series of rabies shots. During this time, Todd runs into Rat again—Rat is working at the town’s drive-in movie theater and offers Todd a job that would pay actual money and allow him to watch movies for free. Todd hops at the opportunity.

The boys hang out often, but Rat keeps a lot of details about his life back from Todd. Still, Todd learns that Rat is 16 years old and that he is a Vietnam veteran—he enlisted at age 14 by lying about how old he was and has already returned from a tour of duty. Todd finds Rat very compelling, but also a little scary. Either way, Todd decides that Rat’s odd life would make a great subject for the story Todd has to write for class.



As the investigation into the dead body continues, it turns out that the dead man was wearing a hat that Todd realizes looks just like the one Rat wears. He can’t help wondering whether Rat has something to do with the body found in the river. The police are having trouble solving the case, and Todd has heard that returning Vietnam vets sometimes snap. When Todd confronts him, Rat refuses to talk about it, but he does tell Todd a few unsettling things about his home life. Rat’s parents are both alcoholics, but where his mom is simply neglectful, his dad is a violent and abusive drunk. The reason Rat enlisted in the army in the first place was to try to get away from his father. Now, Rat and his mother are hiding from his dad again.

Rat is freaked out when a green car repeatedly drives past the drive-in, worried that his dad has managed to find them again. He takes off just as the weather turns stormy and the rain that has been pouring nonstop for the past few days increases again. The river has been threatening to flood, and Rat’s house is right on the bank.

Todd bikes over to Rat’s house in the rain to tell him about the coming flooding. When he walks in, he finds a man lying dead from a gunshot wound in the hall. It’s Rat’s dad. Todd looks up and sees Rat pointing a rifle at him. At gunpoint, Rat leads Todd to a tree house in the woods where they spend the night while floodwaters rise around them. At first, Rat tells Todd that he killed his father, but eventually, he reveals the truth: His mother shot his father in fear, and Rat wants to take the blame in order to protect her.



Several hours later, the flood knocks down the tree, washing the boys out of their hiding spot. A loose tub hits Rat in the head and knocks him out. Unsure of whether his friend is alive, Todd holds onto him in order not to get separated, floating in the water until both are rescued and taken to a hospital. When the police come to the hospital, Todd tells them everything he knows about the events of the previous day. But when they go to arrest Rat for the murder, they discover that he is long gone. Todd realizes that he tried to save Rat the same way he had tried to save the puppy and that in the end, he has to let both of them go.

Both the puppy and Rat leave a permanent mark on Todd, who grows up to be a writer specializing in searching for the hidden truth of a story and a connection to the people he writes about.