12,000 miles in the nick of time

At the end of the last millennium, noted journalist Mark Jacobson and his wife, Nancy, decided that their three children, Rae (sixteen), Rosalie (twelve), and Billy (nine), had become prisoners of the idiot culture, which seemed a terrible waste of perfectly fine DNA. There was only one recourse: to declare war. To get away, far away. To go around the world. 12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time is the story of this three-month trip. The concept: to contrast the immortal works of man -- the Angkor Wat, Durbar Square in Katmandu, the ancient Hindu city of Varanasi, Petra in Jordan, the Pyramids at Giza, and the Holy City of Jerusalem -- with the crap on TV. But this is also the story of a wider journey, stretching across generations, an expedition into the minds of five family members as they make their way through a succession of cramped cars, twenty-seven-hour train rides, and hotel rooms with ceiling fans that crash to the ground in the middle of the night. Writing in the entertaining, insightful, occasionally wacked-out prose that has endeared him to both magazine and novel readers, Jacobson invites us to accompany him and his crew on this Odyssean journey through the familial fogbanks onward, to discover that what really endures are the ties between people who love each other. The literary sojourn is spiced by "Talk back/Backtalk" sections written by Mark's oldest daughter, Rae, who winningly delineates the teenage point of view on Hindu death rituals and a lot of really, really strange food. Honest and funny, 12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time is a rollicking journey across the globe and a heartfelt lesson into what it means to be part of a family.