Eva didn’t choose her family, and her family didn’t choose her either. Lucky Us by Amy Bloom is a story of abandonment, adventure, and acceptance. Eva’s father visited on the weekends and lived with his real family the rest of the time. Her mother left her on her father’s porch with a suitcase and Iris, her new half-sister. As teenagers, the two run off to Hollywood and then scurry back home after Iris’s acting career is sabotaged. Years later, after a tragedy, Eva finds herself in charge of watching over her dying father and a young orphan named Danny, and damned if she’ll be the one to leave either one of them alone again. Lucky Us feels very contemporary in the way it deals with messy families (whether by blood or by choice) and the unexpected ways they form and change, often in an instant. The characters perceive themselves as lucky in the oddest circumstances, and while it’s not a light read, there are moments of levity just when you need them.–Emily Pullen, WORD Bookstore
