Lucky Turtle

Book excerpt: "Two great love affairs--one between characters, the other with the wilds of Montana as its original inhabitants knew it--surge through this engaging, audacious novel. Every page hums with life and energy." --Andrea Barrett, author of The Voyage of the Narwhal and Archangel When sixteen-year-old Cindra Zoeller is sent to a reform camp in Montana, she's a privileged white girl who has evaded more severe punishment for her crime. Even at Camp Challenge, she gets special treatment. While there, she becomes transfixed by Lucky, a watchful, capable, and mysterious camp employee. As the connection between them grows, Lucky and Cindra become lovers and escape into the Rocky Mountains to create an idyllic life, living off Lucky's vast knowledge of the wilderness. But they can run from the outside world for only so long, and the consequences of their naïve fantasy of a future together--and circumstances shaped by skin color--will keep them apart for decades. Lucky goes to prison, and Cindra becomes trapped in a relationship where she is both cosseted and carefully surveilled, controlled and defined by a man who claims to be her rescuer. For Cindra, there will never be another Lucky, and she dreams of one day finding him, the only man she's ever fully trusted, her soulmate. For readers of Richard Russo, Jane Smiley, and John Irving, Lucky Turtle is a deeply engrossing love story from one of our most entertaining and perceptive writers.