The Higher Power of Lucky

The Higher Power of Lucky is a children's novel by American author Susan Patron, featuring illustrations by Matt Phelan. Published by Simon & Schuster in 2006, the story focuses on the adventures of irrepressible ten-year-old Lucky Trimble as she attempts to find some semblance of family and faith in the remote California desert town of Hard Pan. In 2007, the Association for Library Service to Children awarded The Higher Power of Lucky the prestigious Newbery Medal.

As the novel opens, Lucky is eavesdropping on a twelve-step meeting in progress at the local museum and visitor center. She hears the attendees talk about finding their "higher power" after hitting rock bottom, and given all the upheaval in Lucky's life, she feels that she, too, could use the comfort of this mysterious higher power. So, she sets out to find him, or her, or it.

Lucky returns to the trailer she shares with her legal guardian, Brigitte. Two years ago, Lucky's mother died in an accidental electrocution. Lucky's mother and estranged father were divorced, but after her mother's death, her father persuaded his first former wife, Brigitte, to move from France to Hard Pan—population forty-three—to become Lucky's caregiver. Secretly, Lucky fears that Brigitte might have tired of caring for her and might want to return to France.



Fortunately, Lucky has two best friends to lean on. Lincoln loves to tie knots and has a mother who dreams of seeing him become president one day. Lucky's younger friend, Miles, who is five and also motherless, often comes over to have cookies with her and to finagle her into reading him his favorite story, the classic children's book, Are You My Mother?.

Lucky wants to be a scientist like her idol, Charles Darwin, when she grows up. She spends her days killing bugs for her insect collection and writing museum exhibits about the local flora and fauna. She even uses her scientific reasoning to scare a snake out of the clothes dryer and back through the vent that leads to the backyard and the desert—much to the relief of Brigitte, who has an excessive fear of snakes.

One day, Lucky talks to Lincoln about her mother's ashes. She was told to scatter the ashes at her mother's memorial service, but she couldn't do it. Now, two years later, she still has the ashes in an urn. Lincoln informs her that the man who brought her the ashes was actually her father. Lucky did not know this, and she asks Lincoln why no one ever told her that that man was her dad. Lincoln doesn't have an answer for her, so he gives her a knot instead.



Lucky continues listening in on the twelve-step meetings. After discovering Brigitte's suitcase filled with official-looking documents like a passport, Lucky grows more convinced than ever that her caretaker is desperate to leave her. Based on what she overhears at the twelve-step gatherings, Lucky asks her higher power to give her three signs to tell her whether she should run away—essentially abandoning Brigitte so Brigitte can't abandon her—or stay in Hard Pan.

In short order, Lucky receives what she interprets as three signs from her higher power, and, in the midst of a raging sandstorm, she runs away with her mother's urn in tow. As she leaves Hard Pan, she runs into Miles, who is hurt after getting lost in the storm. She takes him with her, and they retreat from the storm in a bunker near an abandoned mine outside of town.

Lincoln tracks Lucky and Miles down, telling them that all the townspeople are looking for them. Once the people of Hard Pan arrive, Lucky and Miles leave the bunker, and Lucky thinks that this might be a good time to finally scatter her mother's ashes, as she was meant to do years ago. With the townspeople in attendance, she performs another, albeit less formal, memorial service, scattering the ashes into the desert wind.



Brigitte takes Lucky back home, explaining that the papers Lucky found in her suitcase were adoption papers. Brigitte wants to adopt Lucky and open a restaurant in Hard Pan.

The Higher Power of Lucky is the first installment in a trilogy of books centering on Lucky Trimble's coming of age. In 2009, Simon & Schuster published Lucky Breaks, which continues the escapades of Lucky, now eleven years old; Goodreads nominated Lucky Breaks for a Goodreads Choice Award for Best Middle Grade & Children's Book, and the Commonwealth Club of California awarded it a gold medal in the juvenile category. Simon & Schuster published the third and final book in the series, Lucky for Good, in 2011; it finds Lucky fighting to keep Brigitte's café open while Miles deals with the sudden return of his mother. The audio version of Lucky for Good was an American Library Association Notable Recording of 2012.