by Susan Roberts
In this homage to True Grit, a young woman makes a perilous journey west in 1863 in search of her gold-mining father.
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| April 2025; St. Martin's Press; 978-1250352309 audio, ebook, print (288 pages); historical fiction |
Tough Luck is set in the 1860s when two young children travel out West to try to find their father, who left four years earlier to find gold in Colorado Territory. After their mother died, the family farm was left to the oldest son. He was a gambler who didn't know how to work a farm, so he sold it and sent his sister and brother to an orphanage. Haidie is 14 and her brother Boots is 10 when they are sent to the orphanage. Haidie spends her time studying her surroundings to try to find a way to escape the orphanage and head west to find their dad. Even though the family had only gotten three letters from him in 4 years, Haidie is convinced that he had found gold and would be so happy to see them. Once they escape, their adventure begins. Haidie is smart enough to chop off her hair and pretend to be a boy since they don't know what kind of people they'll run into. She wants to earn their passage by working with the mules on a wagon train and knows that no one will let a girl do that kind of work. After they work their way to Colorado, there are still problems in finding their father. The people that they met on the wagon train were a really diverse group, and they were often in danger from Indians and from the harsh weather. But Haidie was a tough young girl and she managed to get through it all, plus helping her brother, whom she treated more like a son than a brother.
The story was told from Haidie's perspective, and she was a real feisty character who admits right from the beginning of the book that she often tells lies. "I lie. I do not do it to be ornery or because I am wicked. I lie because it is to my benefit....I can look at a person right in the eye and lie myself silly. I see no harm in it, none at all." ( p 7) She did tell lies throughout the book but they were always to keep her and her brother safe from harm. She was wise beyond her years and was firm in her belief that her father would be a rich man when they found him.
I really enjoyed the characters, especially Haidie, and found their adventures on their way west to be interesting and often scary. Haidie and Boots made friends who cared about them in every part of their journey...friends who helped them out of bad circumstances and really cared about them. Will Haidie and Boots find their father? Will he be rich and live in a fine house? Or is it all wishful thinking on their part? All I can tell you is that the ending was very satisfactory, but not in the way Haidie envisioned it.
I normally don't like Westerns. I didn't like True Grit and wasn't sure if I'd like Tough Luck, but the characters are what made this book so special. The characters were so well written that I could picture them on their adventure. Haidie is a character that I won't soon forget. She was feisty and outspoken, and as she said, she lied all of the time, but she was a hard worker and made some good friends while she was trying to find her father. Even if you don't normally like Western novels, you need to give this one a try!
Buy Tough Luck at Amazon
Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she is three hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west. She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.
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