Lucky Strike

by Nancy Zafris

Overview

ust as she did in her New York Times Notable debut novel, The Metal Shredders, Nancy Zafris follows a colorful cast of characters into uncharted fictional territory, this time landing in the canyon country of the desert Southwest in 1954. For motivations as straightforward as striking it rich to reasons far more complex and counfounding, they each embark on very personal divergent journeys across an unforgiving countryside, even while their quest to find uranium unites them. By turns meditative and funny, frightening, witty and refreshingly wise, Lucky Strike explores the ways that language simply put can mine the inexpressable. In the process, a young widow and her two children learn much about uranium but even more about the nature of the love that binds them. This is a story to touch your heart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936071227
Publisher:	Unbridled Books
Publication date:	05/01/2006
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Nancy Zafris is a Flannery O’Connor Award winner for her story collection, The People I Know. Currently the fiction editor of The Kenyon Review, she lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Editorial Reviews

With its cast of quirky Ohio scrap-metal workers, Zafris's first novel, The Metal Shredders (2002), revealed her talent for capturing an unfamiliar world; her second accomplishes a similar feat with uranium prospectors in Utah. It's 1954, and widowed Jean Waterman has brought her two children west, hoping that the desert air will soothe the weak lungs of her son, Charlie, and that the desert's soil will yield treasures of uranium. She meets Harry, an ex-Mormon traveling salesman who deals in Geiger counters and other prospecting paraphernalia; Jo Dawson, the girlish wife of a good-for-nothing lout determined to spend his last pennies in a quest for uranium; Miss Dazzle, the people person proprietress of the Stagecoach Oasis motel and a host of colorful folk. In the lonely Utah desert, the wanderers form an unlikely family; there are loves, loyalties and secrets, though nothing much happens. Harry falls in love with Jean and Jo and worries that polygamy is in his genes; Miss Dazzle's cheerful personality hides a deeper loneliness. In this lovely book, Zafris finds power in the slow, mute strangeness of everyday anxiety, the blossoming of hope in a barren desert and the terrible irony of what uranium means to those who seek it. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

“Zafris's dry sense of humor runs through the story, a counterpoint to the poignancy of Charlie's illness, the desperation of the uranium seekers, and the not-yet-understood danger of radiation poisoning. The sinister, thrilling mushroom cloud of the bomb casts its shadow over everything. 'Lucky Strike" is a quirky novel that rewards careful reading.”—The Boston Globe

"What a wild ride this book is. The characters are plucky, sympathetic, and memorable, the situations sometimes laugh-out-loud funny and sometimes bittersweet, and the pacing just right. Zafris is a keen observer of the human comedy."—LIBRARY JOURNAL, STARRED

“Comic and darkly ironic.”—Southwest Book Views

“Likable and thought-provoking…another winner.”—THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER

“Laced with quiet tongue-in-cheek humor and told from multiple viewpoints, the adventures of this quirky cast of characters makes for a warmhearted, entertaining read.”—THE DENVER POST

“Funny and touching.”—PAGES MAGAZINE

“Zafris' writing lets emotions and memories penetrate each other the way they do in ordinary thought, though seldom in fiction. Sometimes you have to go back and see what's really being said…Yet each of Zafris' sentences is as sharp-edged as a miner's pick, and to have to reread one occasionally is a pleasure.”—FORT LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL

“All learn that love and friendship endure beyond fortune. In Zafris’ disturbing and ironic novel, the universe operates under skies where the laws of atomic energy are highly visible…[the ending] haunts long after the reader puts the book down.”—THE OREGONIAN

“Eerie…[a] noir-tinged adventure story…One could read Lucky Strike as a historical portrait of a time and place. All the realistic details, though, reverberate with unsettling implications. The characters don't know how poisonous their environment is, but readers
know — and dread the future effects on the characters of the uranium they long to find.”—THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

“The strength of Lucky Strike is thanks in part to its quirky cast of characters…
These characters…come together in an age of innocence, before humans fully understood the effects of radiation. They pool their strengths and offset each other's weaknesses as they work towards the common goal of hitting a lucky strike…This was a book of many fascinating layers…I cared about the characters and their individual fates. That's what good writing is all about.”—MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW

“Her gift is blending unique characters with vivid settings.”—The Winston-Salem Journal

From the Publisher