Homeboyz

Alan Lawrence Sitomer writes a compelling story of piecing together a life after a devastating loss--when the threat of violence lurks at every step.
When Teddy Anderson’s little sister Tina is gunned down randomly in a drive-by shooting, the gangstas who rule the streets in the Anderson family’s rapidly deteriorating neighborhood dismiss the incident as just another case of wrong place, wrong time. According to gangsta logic, Tina doesn’t even count as a statistic.
After his elaborately laid plans for revenge against his sister’s killer are foiled by the cops. Teddy soon finds himself in and then out of prison on house arrest, into the hands of Officer Mariana Diaz, the smart, tough probation officer assigned to oversee his endless hours of community service. As part of the innovative rehabilitation program Diaz runs, Teddy is assigned to tutor Micah, a twelve-year-old orphan and would-be gansta.
As Teddy goes through the motions of complying with the terms of his probation, Diaz has no idea that he is using his genius-level computer hacker skills to plot his final vengeance and to defraud the state education system of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But even though Teddy thinks he knows it all, he fails to see how Micah’s desperate need for love and trust just might have the power not only to pierce all Teddy’s defenses, but to save his family.

Alan Lawrence Sitomer is California’s 2007 Teacher of the Year. In addition to being an inner-city high school English teacher and professor in the Graduate School of Education at Loyola Marymount University, Mr. Sitomer is a nationally renowned speaker specializing in engaging reluctant readers who received the
2004 award for Classroom Excellence from the Southern California Teachers of English and the 2003 Teacher of the Year honor from California Literacy. Homeboyz is the final volume in his young adult trilogy of novels that began with The Hoopster and Hip-Hop High School. Alan is also the author of Hip-Hop
Poetry and The Classics, a text used in classrooms across the United States to engage disengaged students.