The Boys in the Boat: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Joe Rantz was the second son of Harry Rantz and Nellie Maxwell. Harry was an intelligent man who’d been inspired by the Wright Brothers’ experiments with flight, and later built his own an automobile. His wife, Nellie, was a piano teacher and a minister’s daughter. They lived in Spokane. Harry kept a busy schedule, running his own automobile repair shop, while Nellie continued teaching piano. But when Joe was still a young child, his mother died of throat cancer. His older brother, Fred, went off to college, and Harry fled to Canada, scarred by his wife’s death. Joe contracted scarlet fever and nearly died; afterwards, he was raised by his aunt, Alma.

In 1919, when Joe was only five years old, his older brother Fred arranged for him to come out to Pennsylvania, where Fred was now living and working. Fred had married a woman named Thelma LaFollette. Shortly afterwards, Harry returned from Canada and married Thelma’s sister, Thula LaFollette, even though he was seventeen years older than she. Joe returned to live with Harry and Thula; afterwards, Thula and Harry had a child, Harry Junior. When Joe was nine years old, the family’s house nearly burned down. Harry risked his life to save Nellie’s old piano from the fire. Afterwards, Harry moved his family northeast to a Boulder City mining camp where’d he’d worked as a master mechanic. For many, the mining camp was a dismal place to live, but Joe loved it. Thula, however, despised her new home: she’d been raised to be sensitive and artistic, and she excelled at playing the violin—now she felt ignored, and her hands were too cold to play an instrument.

Growing up, Joe developed a passion for gardening. His parents kept a small garden in order to feed themselves cheaply, and Joe was tasked with tending the garden. But Joe and Thula didn’t get along—eventually, Thula became so furious with Joe that she told Harry he’d have to choose between his wife and his son. Harry informed Joe, just ten years old at the time, that he wouldn’t be living in the house any longer. He arranged for Joe to live with the local schoolteacher, chopping wood to pay his way.

Joe’s adolescence was sad and lonely—he had few friends, and he rarely saw his father. But he grew quickly, and enjoyed climbing the mountains near Boulder City in search of food. One day, the schoolteacher (his guardian) showed him how to find edible cauliflower mushrooms growing in the mountains. The knowledge that there was free food hidden in nature excited Joe, and taught him “to recognize a good thing when you saw it.”