Ascension of the Secondhand Heroes — James Ellis Thomas

Boaz is a neighborhood most people never escape, but Benji is seven days away from leaving for college on his art scholarship. When he accidentally injures the preacher's son, his nemesis and a star quarterback who happens to be heading to the same college on a football scholarship, his plans to flee Boaz start to feel shaky.

Though many never leave Boaz, they still have trouble hanging on to their homes. It's a common sight to see your neighbors packing up their apartments and houses to move to the projects: Rochester Estates--a fancy name for a horrible place. And Benji's family isn't immune. When he finds an eviction notice and his scholarship check in the glove compartment of his mother's Buick, he realizes that she has other plans for the money.

Funny, irreverent, and powerful, ASCENSION OF THE SECONDHAND HEROES is a journey into a potent cauldron of race, religion, and ambition, peopled by a cast of characters perhaps best described as "a War album come to life." Benji--obsessed with comic books, uninterested in sports or style, and lamentably a virgin--is just trying to be himself in a place that makes it hard to be anything different.