Inside Out: New Beginnings
by James A. Gauthier, J.D.
Trafford Publishing


"Many mysterious events took place on campus... [T]he only logical conclusions was that there was more to Castleway Academy than just classes."

Castleway Academy, where this story takes place, is a mysteriously private secondary school founded by a concerned group of American citizens. Students there are taught self-defense techniques by ex-Navy SEALs, and answer questions about the Great Society and social security to learn to think for themselves, but have sworn to never discuss what they learn with outsiders. As the novel's unnamed narrator progresses from grade to grade at Castleway, he is given increasingly important tasks to carry out by school authorities. When his work seems to result in a series of suspicious deaths, he begins to question whether following orders is the right thing. But the true significance of his work on the Academy's behalf—spying, stealing, and hacking—only becomes clear when he graduates into the school's innermost sanctum and accepts a mission for which he has been unwittingly preparing all along.

The author's ideas about good governance and education are the most extensively covered topics in Inside Out: New Beginnings, and the author uses the form of a novel to convey them. Readers learn about wasteful federal spending, malfeasance, and corruption as the book's main character is dispatched from Castleway Academy on fact-finding missions. And when the revolutionaries at Castleway Academy challenge governmental malefactors, the author has an opportunity to discuss the benefits of free enterprise and the resourcefulness of determined private citizens. Because the novel is so politically informative, it is lacking in narrative momentum and will be of most interest to like-minded initiates.

Return to USR Home