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Informationen zum Autor Jane Smiley Klappentext "Before Jodie Rattler became a star, she was a girl growing up in St. Louis. One day in 1955, when she was just six years old, her Uncle Drew took her to the racetrack, where she got lucky--and that roll of two-dollar bills she won has never since left her side. Jodie thrived in the warmth of her extended family, and then--through a combination of hard work and serendipity--started a singing career, which catapulted her from St. Louis to New York City, from the English countryside to the tropical beaches of St. Thomas, from Cleveland to Los Angeles, and back again. Jodie comes of age in recording studios, backstage, and on tour, and tries to hold her own in the wake of Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell. Yet it feels like something is missing. Could it be true love? Or is that not actually what Jodie is looking for? Full of atmosphere, shot through with longing and exuberance, romance and rock'n'roll, Lucky is a story of chance and grit and the glitter of real talent, a colorful portrait of one woman's journey in search of herself"-- Leseprobe 1 When I was six and my uncle was twenty-four, he did something that you can’t do anymore—he took me to a racetrack across the river called Cahokia Downs. That was where I saw horses for the first time—it was 1955, we didn’t have a television yet, so I never watched Roy Rogers or My Friend Flicka. I had no idea why we were there or what we were supposed to do, but Uncle Drew held my hand, bought me an ice cream cone, walked around when the horses were being mounted, and shouted when they were running. After we had been there awhile, he handed me a piece of paper and a pencil and told me to circle some numbers. I circled 4, then 2, then 8. He then handed the paper to a man behind a window along with six dollars (he later told me it was his last six dollars, but I never believed that). He got another piece of paper back, and we went to our seats. We sat quietly, jumped up and down for the race, and then he grabbed my hand and took me back to the window. He handed in the piece of paper, and the man counted out his winnings—$5,986, all in twenties and two-dollar bills. My uncle was grinning from ear to ear. We walked around for a long time, then we went to the parking lot. Just before we got into his car, he squatted down and put his hands on my shoulders. He said, “Don’t tell anyone we’ve been here, or where you got this money. Hide it, save it, and buy something nice someday.” He put a folded green pile in my hand. I stuck it in my pocket, and when we got home just before dinner, I went to my room and shoved it under the mattress. A month later, I remembered it, pulled it out, and counted it. It was forty-three two-dollar bills, the $86 that I later realized would tell everyone where he had been and how he had gotten the money. The reason I waited so long was that the day after we went to the races, on Sunday afternoon, my uncle walked in the front door with a puppy, a cocker spaniel. He said it was a present for me, because he knew I wanted a dog, and I did. Mom and I had no idea how to bring up a puppy. She was a blond cocker spaniel, and I named her Dizzy, maybe a misspelling of “Disney,” since Lady and the Tramp was the reason I’d wanted a cocker. Mom only took me to see it one time, but it was as though certain pictures were engraved into my brain: the moon shining over puddles in the road, the spaghetti scene, the shadows, trees looming in the background. Once we had my very own “Lady” in our house, Mom set up a gate that kept her in the kitchen most of the time, and spread paper all over the floor to “paper-train” her. It was my job to feed her—Hill’s Horse Meat, which we bought in cans, and which stank so much when I opened the can that I could barely stand it. Fortunately for me, since it was my job to make sure Dizzy went outside and did her business, our ho...
