Reviewed by David Thayer

Years after graduation Lewis Miner, Eastern Valley High class of ’89, hasn’t gotten much done. Lewis has a thing for leg warmers, a fondness for sloth and a devotion to his version of Catamount Notes, the alumni newsletter. From the opening page to Lewis’ valedictory near the end of the novel, Home Land is constructed around the simmering remains of high school politics and the canned prose of the newsletter. Lewis and his friend Gary remain as you remember them before throwing your cap in the air. These guys never left, they just got older.

Tethered as he is, Lewis aka Teabag, addresses his catamounts the way Cicero spoke to the Romans; he begs, he pleads, he scorches the earth. After he reconnects with an old nemesis, Principal Fontana, and the leg warmer goddess, Jazz Loretta, Lewis actually realizes his desire to warn his peers on the dangers of achievement. “Don’t confuse the issue. Don’t duck the question. Don’t get preachy with the choir…don’t mention anything, even in jest, at the airport. Don’t be born into difficult circumstances, don’t struggle with depression, don’t struggle to pay the bills.”

Teabag’s manifesto makes the entire novel worth reading. You may stumble here and there, Catamounts; the main character has been banished from the mall. It would’ve been a travesty if Home Land hadn’t been published.