Lady Luck

The Wildcat came home from the war with nothing but a medal and a goat named Lily. Vitus Marsden, a WWI veteran drifting through post-war Memphis, has a talent for landing on his feet and a mascot who follows him everywhere. With Lady Luck as his only real plan, he falls into a world of parades, gamblers, and characters who all seem more certain of their place in the world than he is. Captain Jack looms large in his life, while Honey Tone Boone, an ex-uplifter with an spectacularly inflated sense of her own importance, provides the kind of social climbing that makes you wince and laugh at the same time. Wiley writes with the quick, sharp eye of someone who sees the absurdity in American ambition. This is a novel about the peculiar American belief that anyone can reinvent themselves, if the odds break right. It's funny, it's of its moment, and it captures something true about the way we imagine luck as a kind of salvation.