Book Review: "The Higher Power of Lucky"

Susan Patron's delicate novel The Higher Power of Lucky is a lot of things—funny, charming, disturbing, real—but it is, at its core, a love story. Winner of the 2007 Newbery Medal, this novel is imbued with the complexity, emotional honesty, and compelling characters missing in many award-winning novels written for adults.

From the very first page, we know this is no ordinary children’s book. We find Lucky Trimble crouching in the small bit of shade behind a Dumpster, pressing her ear to the wall, listening to her neighbors tell their rock-bottom stories in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Lucky is ten years old, and she listens in on all of the anonymous meetings—alcoholics, gamblers, smokers, and overeaters—while she does her cleaning-up job at Hard Pan’s Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center.

As you can imagine, Lucky has learned quite a lot, listening in on these stories. She knows that the recovering alcoholics hate to see the beer cans left by the recovering smokers and gamblers, the recovering smokers hate the cigarette butts left by the recovering drinkers, and the recovering overeaters hate the candy wrappers left by the recovering smokers, drinkers, and gamblers.  And she knows that the mess they all leave behind is the reason why she has her job, one of the only paying jobs in tiny, dusty Hard Pan, California (pop. 43).

Shifting in the desert heat, Lucky listens to Short Sammy tell his rock-bottom story, a story she has heard so many times she can almost recite it for him.  Short Sammy, who lives in a converted water tank and spends most of his time cleaning his adopted stretch of highway, quit drinking because his wife left him when their dog almost died from a rattlesnake bite on the scrotum, a word that settles into what Lucky calls a “brain crevice”:

Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much. It sounded medical and secret, but also important, and Lucky was glad she was a girl and would never have such an aspect as a scrotum to her own body. Deep inside she thought she would be interested in seeing an actual scrotum. But at the same time—and this is where Lucky’s brain was very complicated—she definitely did not want to see one.

Lucky’s brain is complicated indeed. Short Sammy’s story sticks with her, not just because of his poor dog’s injury, but because she can put herself in Sammy’s cowboy boots and imagine being completely alone and utterly lost. Lucky’s mother, we learn, died when Lucky was eight, when she walked on downed power lines after a rainstorm. Now, two years later, Lucky lives with a Guardian, Brigitte, a French woman who was Lucky’s father’s first wife. A Guardian, unlike a mom, thinks Lucky, can quit anytime she wants, so Lucky needs to be prepared to hit rock bottom.

And so we discover the most important thing Lucky has learned, listening to the anonymous meetings: that she must find her Higher Power so that she can get control over her life, even if that means doing a “fearless and searching moral inventory of herself.”

Lucky carries a survival kit backpack, the contents of which are a hilarious mixture of the practical, the scientific, and the sentimental, many of which are for her dog, HMS Beagle. It might be all you need to know about Lucky, that she named her dog after the “beautiful ship that took the scientist Charles Darwin all around the world on exciting discoveries.” HMS Beagle, Lucky points out, is neither a ship nor a beagle, but she is the perfect companion for all of her scientific adventures.

Like many whip-smart ten-year-old girls, Lucky is bossy and impulsive, and she often says things she regrets (which she blames on her “meanness gland.”) She is also precise in her scientific observation—she writes wonderfully detailed display cards for each critter in her specimen collection (insects which are carefully preserved in Altoid boxes, and are, of course, in her survival kit). These wasps and tarantulas and flies terrify and disgust Brigitte, which is one of the many reasons Lucky is sure Brigitte will be on the next flight to Paris.

In addition to her meanness gland, though, Lucky has a heart as big as the endless desert sky above her dry, rocky town. Her best friend is a boy her age named Lincoln, who obsessively ties knots (he is the youngest member of the International Guild of Knot Tyers) and who is the only person Lucky can share an eye-smile with. Lucky and Lincoln look after hapless Miles, a kindergartener being raised by his distracted grandmother. Miles is a sweet mess of a kid who carries his tattered copy of the (perfectly thematic) children’s classic Are You My Mother? everywhere he goes.

Life is strange and difficult in Hard Pan, but its 43 residents have knitted together into a loyal, if unusual, extended family. When Lucky decides to run away, and when both Miles and a terrible dust storm complicate her plans, it’s the people of Hard Pan who help her understand the meanings of true love and real family, of home. Susan Patron draws each character with the same tenderness you’ll find in the gentle black-and-white line drawings provided by illustrator Matt Phelan: few books have such a perfect pairing of words and images.

There was, of course, an uproar over Patron’s use of the word “scrotum.”  As I mentioned, this is no ordinary book for children: the backstory of Lucky’s father and his marriages is rather complex, there are numerous references to drug and alcohol use, and, of course, there’s the scrotum right on the first page.  But as in any important novel that tells an important love story, this one does not shy away from the things that are difficult, or uncomfortable, or deeply painful.  If you do it right, a fearless and searching moral inventory is meant to cover everything, particularly the uncomfortable bits.  Susan Patron, and her beautiful Lucky—they both do it right.