Blowin' It

Fiction. BLOWIN' IT follows Billy George—mid-twenties, underemployed, half in love—on a questionable road trip from Philly to the Southwest. Billy gets a check in the mail, quits his placeholder job, and drives a van filled with ancient Chinese artifacts across the country, encountering alluring anarchists, sagacious con men, and other lost souls along the way, until he lands at the geographic and figurative rock bottom of his life in Key West. For those of us growing older and further away from the attainments of previous generations, Billy George is an instantly recognizable, funnier, and more heedless version of ourselves. With a satirical style reminiscent of Terry Southern and a deferential nod to the Coen Brothers, author Wintfred Huskey writes with dead-on, deadpan humor about the economics of a quarter-life crisis. BLOWIN' IT asks important questions about the power of money, the attainment of happiness, and the purpose of failure.

"Huskey's tale is comic to be sure, yet notably wise and touching. The narrative choices are bold, and the payoffs for the reader grand. This is one of those one-day books. You'll get so much of what you want, so often, that you won't stop reading until you run out of pages."—John Brandon