SYNOPSIS

While eavesdropping on the AA meetings in her tiny town of Hard Pan (CA), Lucky hears fascinating personal stories and learns that everyone is looking for a Higher Power.

Lucky is keen to find her own Higher Power – she has lost her mom in an electrical accident and is being temporarily raised by her absent dad’s ex-wife, come from Paris specially for the job.

As an avid naturalist, Lucky decides to turn the town’s Museum into an international natural-phenomenon attraction – perhaps that would be her Higher Power?

After finding her guardian’s passport packed in a suitcase and suspicious that Brigitte is keen to return to Paris, Lucky replenishes her survival kit backpack and runs away from home in the middle of a terrible windstorm – likely so she wouldn’t be the one getting abandoned this time.

Hard Pan’s residents come to Lucky’s rescue (and a fellow 5-year-old runaway she found on the way), while her Higher Power unexpectedly leads her to parting with her mom’s ashes in a memorable way.

She also discovers that Brigitte’s trip is meant to enable Lucky’s legal adoption, and the start of a settled life for them both in Hard Pan.

PERFECT AGE 10 – 15

We love

• Here’s a book about a child’s hard life – abandoned by dad, horribly missing dead mom, being raised by a tentative stranger – which not only doesn’t make a parent cringe but makes you fall in love with the child, her thoughts, and her community, and goes to the top of my “kid summer reading” list.
• So many great conversation opportunities – about relationships between adults and between parents and children, about misfortune, about adventure and perseverance, about friendships and compassion!
• Lucky’s terrific ability to carefully observe the world around her will inspire your reader – for example, her thoughts about how very, very lucky “people on Earth are to have this exact moon” are still giving me a happy pause!

WATCH OUT FOR (Language, Big / Sensitive Topics, Outdated Concepts):

• There are moving moments describing abandonment and profound loss for a child – they’re told with care and kindness but may elicit thoughts about parents’ role in younger readers.
• The mom’s death – electrocuted by a loose wire after a windstorm – is of course jarring. Lucky is handed her ashes by the “cremation man” (who she later finds out is her absent dad…) and told to spread them to the wind; she refuses.
• Not your typical characters (a former alcoholic, a mom in jail whose 5-year-old boy is raised by grandma) may raise some questions in your reader – an opportunity to demonstrate that people are complicated, lovely and somehow very relatable.

CONVERSATION STARTERS

• Tell me about Lucky’s survival kit backpack – why does she have it and how does it come in handy to her?
• What do you imagine life in a town of 43 people to be like? How is it different from yours? Why do people like living there?
• What may have made Lucky want to run away from home?
• Lucky is very observant about her surroundings and about people. What is a thing she noticed or described that surprised you?