In the summer he was just a vine that was growing around a pole, but by Halloween the vine had a formed into the shape of a body with pumpkin head that became the October Boy. It was an old tradition in the small Midwestern town that the October Boy with a butcher knife in his vine hand goes into town and the teenage boys would wait for him. The teenager who kills the October Boy is giving the gift of escape from the town. It’s 1963 and Pete McCormick is just sixteen and his life isn’t going well. His mother has died, and his father has lost his job and is drinking his life away. To make matters worse there is the sadistic police officer Ricks who runs the town with his guns and fists. Pete dreams of leaving his dead end life, and he knows the only way to do that is to hunt down the October Boy and kill him. He is smart enough to win the contest, but many of the other boys in town have the same goal, and the October Boy isn’t giving up without a fight. In Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge, there is a horrible secret that Pete and the other boys don’t know and those in the town who do know the secret are too scared to tell.