Home at the Edge takes you from jail to the madhouse. An on the road and in the streets memoir of free-loving, acid-dropping radical youth in 1969, that still resonates today. We last saw 17-year-old Ron lying handcuffed over the hood of a car in “Chicago Rage.” We pick up with him entering Chicago’s Cook County Jail, where he and his radical companions are kept segregated from the other prisoners to prevent them from, god forbid, being a bad influence on murders and rapists.
Underage at 17, he is bailed out only to be admitted to a mental hospital where he bonds with other disaffected youth, fellow ‘freaks’ grappling with their identity and struggling against the status quo. The attempted and successful suicides of his companions and would-be lovers haunt him. He must confront his inner and outer demons and, as he turns 18, the looming military draft that threatens to toss his whole generation into an immoral war.