Hoot (novel) - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Roy Eberhardt, an odd young man, is being bullied by Dana Matherson. During one altercation, Roy breaks Dana's nose, and is made to write an apology letter. He tries to call a truce with Dana, but to no avail.

Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House Corporation intends to build a pancake house in Coconut Cove. The bulldozers have already been parked on the construction site, but work is delayed over and over again because of bizarre but effective acts of vandalism that occur in the night. Roy learns this is the work of a boy he only knows as "Mullet Fingers", who he befriends. His step-sister, Beatrice, tells Roy that Mullet Fingers was sent off to boarding school by his mother, after she married Beatrice's father, but ran away and lives in the swamplands. His motives, however, are intended to be honorable; Mullet Fingers wants to save the endangered burrowing owls that live on the site from being killed when the bulldozing begins.

Guards at the construction site deny the existence of the owls. Roy attempts to help Mullet Fingers prove the owls are on the site, including loaning him a digital camera. In a current events project, Roy tells his history class about the owls and how the pancake company will bury them, and encourages them to join him in protesting the next day.

Roy and Beatrice lead a student march to the construction site, where they expose the company's greed and dishonesty to the entire town. Although Mullet Finger's pictures were unidentifiable, a live burrowing owl flies out, proving that owls still live in the area. Kimberly Lou Dixon, an actress who acted as the company's mascot, is disgusted with her employer's callousness and joins the demonstrators. The young people succeed in exposing the illegal acts of those in power, including illegally removing an environmental impact statement from the official file, and, eventually, in saving the birds and their habitat. Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House is put into disgrace, and can only evade ruin by expelling the guilty employees and disavowing the plan to build.

Mullet Fingers, in the effort to escape his vile family situation, climbs out of a bathroom window and is accidentally mistaken for a burglar. He is sent to the same juvenile detention center as Dana. When Mullet Fingers' mother spitefully tells the police that he stole a ring from her, Mullet Fingers escapes the center using Dana and his mother as a distraction. At the end, Roy discovers that Mullet Finger’s real name is Napoleon Bridger Leep.