Barnhardt's fourth novel is a tour de force, chronicling a majestic southern family's rise and fall in true Victorian era fashion. The Johnston and Jarvis family saga spans several decades and is stunning in it's honesty, cleverness, and dark humor. Jerene Jarvis Johnston strives to uphold her southern affluent roots and traditions in Charlotte, North Carolina, but as the twenty first century progresses and southern lifestyles and society changes she finds it harder to maintain the facade. Her four children lead vastly different lives than she had envisioned for them, her good for nothing alcoholic and celebrity author brother constantly makes a mess which she has to clean up, her mother doesn't have the common decency to die and stop being a thorn in their side, and to top it all off her saintly husband, Duke, has some skeletons in his closet. An engaging and inventive romp into the rise and fall of one of the most eclectic southern families you wished you knew. Narrated brilliantly by North Carolina native, Scott Shepherd, who give all the characters a voice their own in true southern accents. Scott gives them all perfect inflections, sarcasms, and tones; I can envision no other narrator carrying out such a fine job on this novel. For fans of southern literature and dark family sagas. A MUST read for the fall! Erin Cataldi, Franklin College, Franklin, IN
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