Amazon.com (ISBN 0679749527, Paperback)

McInerney recounts nearly three decades of history through the lives of prep school roommates Patrick Keane and Will Savage. Keane, the narrator, goes the corporate law route. Savage is the rebellious scion of an aristocratic family from the Deep South. Anxious to atone for the misdeeds of a family whose history includes the brutal suppression of a slave rebellion, Savage becomes a leader of the 1970s counterculture and, later, a music company executive whose mission is to record blues musicians. Along the way he marries a black singer at least in part to get a rise out of his family.