Just about everything in Endora Iowa (pop. 1 091 and dwindling) is eating Gilbert Grape a
twenty-four-year-old grocery clerk who dreams only of leaving. His enormous mother once the
town sweetheart has been eating nonstop ever since her husband's suicide and the floor
beneath her TV chair is threatening to cave in. Gilbert's long-suffering older sister Amy
still mourns the death of Elvis and his knockout younger sister has become hooked on makeup
boys and Jesus -- in that order. But the biggest event on the horizon for all the Grapes is
the eighteenth birthday of Gilbert's younger brother Arnie who is a living miracle just for
having survived so long. As the Grapes gather in Endora a mysterious beauty glides through
town on a bicycle and rides circles around Gilbert until he begins to see a new vision of his
family and himself.... With this wry portrait of small-town Iowa -- and a young man's life at
the crossroads -- Peter Hedges created a classic American novel charged with sardonic
intelligence (Washington Post Book World).
