title: A Way from Home: A Novel
author:  Nancy Clark 
description: The dry wit and clever plotting that distinguished Clark's debut, <i>The Hills at Home</i>, are applied with a heavy hand in this new comedy of manners, whose three parts fail to mesh. In 1992, Alden Lowe, his wife, Becky, and their teenage daughter, Julie, take up residence in an ancient castle in Prague. Alden is in charge of the finance ministry, while Becky attempts to launch fledgling entrepreneurs. The tone is high farce, as we watch Alden being ineffectual; Becky moping after an erstwhile lover, William; Julie seeking to bed her father's aide; and everybody else vying to become capitalists. By the time Becky decamps to join William in Khadafy's Libya, the reader has little empathy for any of the self-absorbed characters who have been blundering around Prague. The narrative takes hold, however, in a flashback to the lovers' triangle two decades earlier, before Becky married Alden. This is the heart of the novel, and it's tender, funny and touching, especially since Alden's grandparents are the eccentric WASP Hills readers met in the first book. But the final third of the novel, with Becky and William dreamily ensconced in an ancient villa is flat, notable mainly for its local color and political references. Clark's talent for satire shines only at intervals. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: **Contents**
  
  About the Book
  
  About the Author
  
  Also by Susan Lewis
  
  Title Page
  
  Dedication
  
  Chapter One
  
  Chapter Two
  
  Chapter Three
  
  Chapter Four
  
  Chapter Five
  
  Chapter Six
  
  Chapter Seven
  
  Chapter Eight
  
  Chapter Nine
  
  Chapter Ten
  
  Chapter Eleven
  
  Chapter Twelve
  
  Chapter Thirteen
  
  Chapter Fourteen
  
  Chapter Fifteen
  
  Chapter Sixteen
  
  Chapter Seventeen
  
  Chapter Eighteen
  
  Chapter Nineteen
  
  Chapter Twenty
  
  Chapter Twenty-One
  
  Chapter Twenty-Two
  
  Chapter Twenty-Three
  
  Chapter Twenty-Four
  
  Chapter Twenty-Five
  
  Chapter Twenty-Six
  
  Acknowledgements
  
  Copyright
  
  About the Book
  
  Josie Clark is the type of woman people instantly warm to. She’s kind,
  humorous, selfless and a devoted wife and mother. Though the recession has hit
  her family hard, her husband Jeff is determined that whatever it takes they
  will find work.
  
  Bel Monkton is a successful property developer, with a beautiful house by the
  sea. On the surface she seems to have everything, but she’s lonely and haunted
  by a past that has destroy