Fenton's top ten reasons to read "Merit Badges":

Kevin Fenton

1.  Junior high is funny when it happens to someone else.
2.  You were a boy scout.
3.  Owning the book might make people think you were a boy scout.
4.  "Lost" is no longer on television.
5.  Minnisapa, Minn. might be a lot like your home town.
6.  You like lists.
7.  Your adolescence lasted 20 years, too.
8.  There aren't any vampires.
9.  It has that 'new-book' smell.
10.  Because if you don't, you're a dube.

The winner of the AWP Award for the novel and a recent Midwest Connections selection, "Merit Badges" -- which Fenton describes as a blend of Virginia Woolf's experimental novel "The Waves" and television's "That '70s Show" -- follows four high school friends growing up together during the 1970s in Minnisapa, a fictional town a half-hour north of the Twin Cities. 

There's Quint, whose rebellion frays into self-destruction; Slow, who struggles to become the world's first teenage father figure; Chimes, who fears losing his friends while picking up a seven-ten split; and Barb, who escapes the conformity of Minnisapa only to find herself returning by dark of night.

Four alternating voices narrate the lives of this group of Midwesterners through their first postgraduate years in the early 2000s, as they encounter loss and love, sex and drugs, sitcoms and bowling.

Minnesota author Marisha Chamberlain describes "Merit Badges" as "the sort of book that tells the truth of daily endeavor so unflinchingly, and often so amusingly, that, despite the grittiness of the material, [it] cheers and heartens, the way great literature does."

MinnPost -- in conjunction with New Issues Press -- is giving away two hardcover copies of "Merit Badges." If you are a member of a registered BCC club and would like to enter to win, email bookclubclub [at] minnpost [dot] com by 5 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 1. Include your name, mailing address, and the name of your registered book club.

(To register your book club, click the link on the righthand column of this page.)

Book clubs take note: "Merit Badges" reading discussion guides -- one for sober conversation and one for slightly drunken debate -- are available on the "Merit Badges" website. If your book club is interested in arranging an author visit or do a phone interview with Fenton, contact him at through this online form.