Devastated, Jason decides he's finished with music and, using money from an insurance settlement, he produces and directs a film that takes him to Los Angeles, where he falls in love with an aspiring actress who is herself seeking a new life after fleeing the civil wars in her native Yugoslavia. The actress, Irina, is married to a wealthy Englishman who is happily unaware of her affair with Jason and, possibly, others prior. Their stormy romance is addictive to Jason, who begs Irina to leave her husband for him. She repeatedly and emptily assures him she will. At a party one night, Jason meets another former punk who tells him that Jim Cassady has recently been spotted, homeless and panhandling on the streets of Hollywood. This is the first sighting of Cassady, as far as Jason knows, since Rule of Thumb disbanded in the early 80s. Jason has always been mystified and intrigued by Cassady's disappearance, and he determines to find him, eventually discovering that Cassady is now living in a bleak Los Angeles suburb with his elderly mother. Cassady shares some of his recent songs and poems with Jason, who thinks they're deserving of a wide audience. Except for Cassady's music and the advice he gave Jason and Peewee at CBGB almost twenty years before, Jason might still be miserable in North Carolina, and he means to express his gratitude by helping Cassady gain a new following. But Cassady is resigned to obscurity, and he grudgingly submits to Jason's efforts on his behalf. Perhaps out of spite, he causes a rupture in Jason's relationship with Irina, and Jason promises to kill him for it, only to reaffirm, in the book's epilogue, how indebted he is to Cassady, who has again changed the course of his life. Maximum RocknRoll cited the writing of "Banned for Life" as being “realistic” and “spot on,” with a “damn good” presentation of the punk scene, singling out the book's “nuanced, interesting” characters, who invite the reader to “actually care about what’s going to happen to them.” Razorcake said the book “reaches across the punk divide,” and commended Haney for his “strong voice” and for not “whining about the good old days,” just as Big Wheel praised Haney for incorporating “social and political messages into the book without ever coming off as too preachy," while praising the book itself as an “engaging page turner.”