Oh the Glory of It All

Wilsey takes us on a tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families. His blond-bombshell mother (one of the thinly veiled characters in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City) is a 1980s society-page staple, entertaining Black Panthers and movie stars in her marble and glass penthouse; his enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade. When Sean turns nine, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother first invites him to commit suicide with her, then has a "vision" of salvation that requires traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow. Her goal: peace on earth (and a Nobel Prize). Sean meets Indira Gandhi, Helmut Kohl, Menachem Begin, and the pope; then he is pushed out of San Francisco and sent spiraling through five high schools, till he finally lands at an unorthodox reform school cum "therapeutic community" in Italy.--From publisher description.