Charles Norstadt

Charles Norstadt is the fourteen-year-old protagonist of "The Man Without A Face" by Isabelle Holland. Charles lives with his mother, seventeen-year-old sister, Gloria, and younger sister, Meg. Charles' mother has been married and divorced four times and is working on marriage number five. The family's permanent residence is in an apartment in New York City. As the story unfolds, the family has moved temporarily to their summer home on a peninsula off the Atlantic Coast.

Charles is not a happy youngster. His mother and sister, Gloria, are always upset with him. He can do nothing right and is criticized at every turn. The two women also criticize his father, his mothers' second ex-husband, in an attempt to tear down any positive image that Charles has struggled to build about his absent father. When he realizes that Gloria has changed her mind about going away to school in...