Summer of My Amazing Luck EPUB

A Novel by the Governor Generals Literary Awardwinning author of A Complicated Kindness

Lucy Van Alstyne always thought shed grow up to become a forest ranger. Instead, at the age of eighteen, shes found herself with quite a different job title: Single Mother on the Dole. As for the father of her nine-month-old son, Dillinger, wellit could be any of number of guys.

At the Have-a-Life housing projectaptly nicknamed Half-a-Life by those who call it homeLucy meets Lish, a zany and exuberant woman whose idea of fashion is a black beret with a big silver spider brooch stuck on it. Lish is the mother of four daughters, two by a man on welfare himself and twins from a one-week stand with a fire-eating busker who stole her heartand her wallet.

Living on the dole isnt a walk in the park for Lucy and Lish. Dinner almost always consists of noodles. Transportation means pushing a crappy stroller through the rain. Then there are the condescending welfare agents with their dreaded surprise inspections. And just across the street is Serenity Place, another housing project with which Half-a-Life is engaged in a full-on feud. When the women arent busy snitching on each other, theyre spreading rumoursor plotting elaborate acts of revenge.

In the middle of a mosquito-infested rainy season, Lish and Lucy decide to escape the craziness of Half-A-Life by taking to the road. In a van held together with coat-hangers and electrical tape and crammed to the hilt with kids and toys, they set off to Colorado in search Lishs lost love and the father of her twins. Whether theyll find him is questionable, but the down-and-out adventure helps Lucy realize that this just may be the summer of her amazing luck.

Miriam Toewss debut novel, Summer of My Amazing Luck opens our eyes to a social class rarely captured in fiction. At once hilarious and heartbreaking, it is inhabited by an unforgettable and poignant group of characters. Shortlisted for both the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, it also earned Miriam the John Hirsch Award for the Most Promising Manitoba Writer.


From the Trade Paperback edition.