Please Ignore Vera Dietz Characters

Vera Dietz is a tough cookie. As the titular character of the book, she's dealing with quite a lot—her best friend in the whole wide world has just died, but instead of being straight-up sad, she...

When the book opens up, Charlie Kahn is already dead. But that doesn't mean that we don't get to know him intimately. Through Vera's eyes, and through Charlie's brief addresses to the reader from b...

Ken Dietz is Vera's only remaining parent now that her mother has run off to Las Vegas, and he's both her main support system and a huge annoyance to her. But he's not just a background character l...

Jenny Flick is described like some kind of cliché of a troubled teenager that you'd find on a television show—she wears lots of black, too much eyeliner, smokes, and sexually propositions boys w...

James is a twenty-three-year-old college drop-out who works as a pizza delivery guy, and is also Vera's new workplace crush at Pagoda Pizza. He's a nice enough guy—he likes Vera a lot and invites...

The Pagoda is definitely the most unexpected character with a point of view in the book because, well, it's an inanimate landmark in the town. But the Pagoda comes in every once in a while to give...

Charlie's new group of friends is known as the Detentionheads because they're all a bunch of teenage delinquents who are in, well, detention all the time. Charlie likes his new friends because they...

Vera never really comes into direct contact with John the pervert, but he's a big part of the story because Charlie knows him well. He's a dude who has been buying used underwear from Charlie since...

Charlie's parents keep a lot of things secret in their household. His dad is an abusive man, who's constantly yelling at his wife and son. And he beats them, too, even though no one says it outrigh...

Sindy Dietz may be Vera's mother, but she doesn't have much of a presence in the book. Since she left when Vera was twelve years old, Ken and Vera have pretty much taken care of themselves without...

Vera works at Pagoda Pizza as a delivery girl, and is pretty close to all the other employees since she sees them more than anyone else. She's the youngest of the bunch, so she's treated as a kind...