Eleanor's recently returned from a year away from home, living with distant family friends after being kicked out of the house by her violent stepfather. Eleanor lives in poverty in a tiny house, sharing a room with her four younger siblings.

They come from drastically different backgrounds. What happens next is a slow, dawning realization that the two of them have a connection unlike anything they've ever had with anyone else.Īs Eleanor and Park share silent bus rides, we learn more about each of them, the narrative alternating between the two characters. Park knows immediately that the popular kids on the bus will eat her for lunch, so he silently offers her a seat. But when he sees Eleanor Douglas get on the bus one morning, he knows he's not as much of an outsider as she is.Ĭhubby, with bright red hair and a habit of dressing in men's clothing, Eleanor's mere existence is like a glowing neon sign for the bullies in their high school. Park Sheridan, a half-Korean high school kid in the very Caucasian city of Omaha, Nebraska, feels like an outsider in lots of ways: He's obsessed with music, he loves comic books, and he doesn't have a ton of friends. Since this book is set in the mid-1980s, in true 80s cassette-tape style, we rewind to the beginning of the school year to find out what happened.

When the book opens, we learn right away that our narrator, Park, has lost someone named Eleanor.

Eleanor and park novel