Lady Luck’s Map of Vegas sounds like it would be a book about gambling and Vegas, but it’s not. It’s really about mother and daughter relationships, family secrets, and a search for not only a lost daughter but lost selves. The author, Barbara Samuel, is a multiple RITA award winner and has written over twenty-five books including women’s fiction and historical and contemporary romances.
India is a 40 year old web designer involved in a purposefully uncommitted romance. Gypsy, her identical twin sister is a schizophrenic artist. Their mother, Eldora, is still beautiful and flirtatious at sixty something. When their father and husband passed away, all three women handled his death differently. The mother turned to alcohol. Gypsy went off her medication and has gone missing. India had made a promise to care for her mother, so she left her perfect single life in Denver and temporarily moved home to Colorado Springs.
India and Eldora both tell the story from their point of views. Eldora realizes that not one person in the world really knows her. She convinces India to take a road trip with her along Highway 66 through New Mexico to Las Vegas. They are looking for Gypsy, but are following the route of Eldora took as a young woman, and the route Eldora and the girls took years ago. As they travel, Eldora explains the sad, shocking, and sometimes ugly truth of her own life. India tries hard to keep her own secret. She is unexpectedly pregnant, afraid of the odds of having a schizophrenic child, unsure what her boyfriend thinks, and has to decide what her own future will hold.
I loved the references to the art and cultures of the southwest. The main themes in Gypsy’s artwork are the highly decorated graves of the southwest, and descansos, which are the roadside crosses planted at the sites of accidents.
Also See:
Really Something – Shirley Jump
Always a Bridesmaid – Andrea Boeshaar