num_pages: 361
description: One of Slate's and Kirkus Review's Best Books of 2013 and The New York Times National Public Radio  and Indie Bound Lookaway Lookaway is a wild romp through the South and therefore the history of our nation written by an absolute ringmaster of fiction. Alice Sebold New York Times bestselling author of The Lovely Bones Jerene Jarvis Johnston and her husband Duke are exemplars of Charlotte North Carolina's high society where old Southern moneyand older Southern secretsmeet the new wealth of bankers boom-era speculators and carpetbagging social climbers. Steely and implacable Jerene presides over her family's legacy of paintings at the Mint Museum; Duke the one-time college golden boy and descendant of a Confederate general whose promising political career was mysteriously short-circuited has settled into a comfortable semi-senescence as a Civil War re-enactor. Jerene's brother Gaston is an infamously dissolute bestselling historical novelist who has never managed to begin his long-dreamed-of literary masterpiece while their sister Dillard is a prisoner of unfortunate life decisions that have made her a near-recluse. As the four Johnston children wander perpetually toward scandal and mishap. Annie the smart but matrimonially reckless real estate maven; Bo a minister at war with his congregation; Joshua prone to a series of gay misadventures and Jerilyn damaged but dutiful to her expected role as debutante and eventual society bride. Jerene must prove tireless in preserving the family's legacy Duke's fragile honor and what's left of the dwindling family fortune. She will stop at nothing to keep what she hasbut is it too much to ask for one ounce of cooperation from her heedless family? In Lookaway Lookaway  Wilton Barnhardt has written a headlong hilarious narrative of a family coming apart a society changing beyond recognition and an unforgettable woman striving to pull it all together. A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013
language: English
title: Lookaway, Lookaway
publisher: St. Martin's Press