The Luck

by Kathy Biggs

Epic generational saga set in America's rural west.

In 1930s Midwest America iron-willed Beattie and Irish-born Darragh give all they have to their farm, The Luck. Despite its tragic history, and the dark lakeat its heart, they pour love into the land. When their only son Conrad flies the nest, Beattie is heartbroken until her two spirited granddaughters Rose and Olive arrive, breathing new life into the farm. Olive grows into a savvy entrepreneur, but life doesn't work out as well for Rose who mysteriously goes missing...

An intricately woven tale of joy, heartbreak, betrayal and murder in this epic family saga with a gripping mystery at its heart.

365 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 6, 2022

Reviews

[Sally Cronin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found it hard to believe that this was a debut novel as it was superb. Characters rich with interesting pasts and both admirable and less attractive traits and personalities and a stunning Midwest American backdrop to a family saga spanning generations.

Beginning in the 1930s when times were very hard, it needed grit and determination to make something of the land and Darragh and Beattie won my heart with their recilience despite challenging years leading to their meeting.

Their love for each other needed to be strong as they struggled to accept the relentless barrage of challenges life threw at them over the following decades. The author knows how to paint a dark picture but also infuses the story with lighter moments of achievement devotion and the courage to overcome aversity.

There is a refreshing unpredictability about the story with several twists and turns over the years that keep you guessing. Just when you think you have it figured out…you realise you don’t and keep turning the pages until you find out the truth.

I can highly recommend to lovers of well written family sagas, mid-20th century history and the unexpected.

[Bookworm86 · Rating 5 out of 5]

REVIEW 



Review for 'The Luck' by Kathy Biggs



Read and reviewed for Kathy Biggs and Honno publishers.



Publication date 6th October 2022



This is Kathy's debut novel.


I was originally drawn to this book by its intriguing sounding synopsis and title and by the fact the author is quite local to me. I must admit I was also biased due to the publisher being Honno. I have yet to read a book published by Honno that I haven't enjoyed. Hopefully this won't be the first... Watch this space! (Written before I started reading the book).



This novel consists of 58 chapters. The chapters are short in length so easy to read 'just one more chapter' before bed...OK, I know yeah right, but still just in case!



This book is based in the USA 🇺🇸. 


This book is written in third person perspective and the main protagonists are Darragh O'Grady, Beattie O'Grady, Olive Mckenzie, Gil Mckenzie, Ruaridh Mckenzie, Rose Kelly and James Kelly. The benefits of third person perspective with multiple protagonists are that it let's you see the bigger picture of what's going on and you get to know more characters more, what they are thinking and what they are doing. It feels like you get to see the whole picture and not miss out in anything.


WOW!!!! What can I say?!?! One thing I have got to say before getting into my review is clear your schedules and grab the tissues as you will need them!!! 


This has got to be one of the most stunning books I have EVER read ♥ 



This book is beautifully written with vivid descriptions setting the picture perfectly in the readers mind. The title, description and cover works perfectly with the storyline. 



This book is devastatingly heart-breaking and beautiful. I absolutely love the unique storyline and the fact that it is set over multiple generations of the same family makes you are loving several lives in one book. It tells us the story of the O'Grady, Mckenzie and Kelly families over many years. We start with Darragh discovering some land and turning it into a farm called 'The Luck'. Darragh meets Beattie and get married shortly after. They have one son called Connor who keeps going off and leaving them for years at a time until he doesn't come back at all. During one of his visits he brings his wife Vida and daughters Olive and Rose. During one of his disappearances Vida visits Darragh and Beattie and asks them to look after Olive and Rose until she gets settled. They end up with them until they are adults and are more like mother and father to them than grandparents. We see both Olive and Rose get married and have children themselves, Rose move out to San Francisco and another disappearance among many other events. This book is filled with every emotion you can think of including love, secrets, regrets, jealousy, heartbreak, happiness, tension, worry, shock, suspense, mystery and so, so much more!!! .It is one of the most unforgettable books I have ever read!! Kathy's evocative writing skills sucks the reader straight into the storyline with the characters, hospital and the past coming to life around them. I was absolutely mind blown when I realised this was her debut novel!! I mean WOW!! If this is her first book I just cannot wait to read her future books and if they are a quarter as amazing as this one they are guaranteed to be absolute page turners!!! This is just one of those rare books that words just cannot express how powerful and emotional it is. It will make you cry both tears of happiness and sadness. The multiple narrative brings the story to life along with the descriptions and ensures the reader can see everything that is going on and what the characters are thinking and feeling.  When I was reading this book I could feel my heartbeat speeding up as I was getting a dark sense of foreboding the deeper into the book I got and I ended up with tears streaming down my face so make sure you get those tissues ready!! It is one of those books that I just simply could not put down and I walked around everywhere with my kindle and the book. Every chapter ended in a way that I had to know what was going to happen next and then it would move on to the next chapter and do the same so I blew through this in one sitting. Reading this book really does make you feel that you are standing with them and going through their pain, love, joy and suffering. While you are reading this you are going through a journey of love and loss, heartbreak, secrets, love, and regrets and so, so much more. It really is a rollercoaster ride of emotions. I was utterly glued to the pages and I could not bring myself to put it down. I was carrying the book around to read it  every chance that I got. You need to clear your schedules and get the tissues at the ready because you will not be able to put this book down. This is one of those books that will stay with me for a long time and although it could be a difficult read at times with emotions running high I would seriously recommend it to anyone and everyone!! 


This may be the first book I have read by Kathy but I cannot wait to get hold of more books by this extremely talented author. It is one of the most stunning and unforgettable book that I have ever read and one that will stay with me for years if not forever! AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ!!


The characters were all very strong and realistic and Kathy's writing ensured they jumped off the pages at me. My heart went out to each of the main protagonists for different reasons during different chapters. I absolutely loved Beattie's absolutely fantastic, strong and attitude filled personality. The fact that she wasn't a typical lady of the time and got stuck into hard work definitely makes her a great role model. She also took on not only her grandchildren but her great grandchildren on too and made an absolutely amazing "mum" to them all. My heart broke for her on so many occasions especially with Connor and as a mum myself this is one of my worst nightmares. She had so much to deal with with the farm and her family but was still there for family and friends alike. She made me laugh and also cry so many times and she was just so realistic and a woman I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of her like Pearl and Macy. She is definitely someone you would want on your side and would make a great friend, it's just a shame she isn't in real life. I absolutely loved watching her character develop throughout the book and the relationships change between her and other characters. I thought Darragh was a great man and it broke my heart seeing him towards the end of the book. Darragh and Beattie really did make a perfect couple as well as fantastic parents, grandparents and great grandparents. Darragh is great with his hands and would help out with anyone and anything and did an amazing job with The Luck. You can definitely tell that he missed flying the Annie O'Grady and although heartbreaking I think the ending was planned and in a way perfect. Olive definitely had the biggest personality change I believe and went from an extremely clever girl who could go big places to quite a manipulative and jealous woman. There were times that I did feel sorry for her but then others where I believe she got what she deserved for messing around with things. I thought it was disgraceful how she treated Gil and her son Ruaridh, called McKenzie more throughout the book. However my heart did bleed for her after something happened which nobody deserved but I won't go into any more details as I don't want to spoil it for others. I definitely liked Gil more than Olive and he was such a sweet and hardworking guy, it was so sad to see the way he was being treated at times. Gil made a great Dad and a fantastic husband. I also bonded with Rose more than Olive. They definitely had completely different personalities and Rose was the sweeter of them both. I could not stand her husband Michael Kelly who was full of himself and she deserved so much better than him. Rose took more interest in her so called mother and it was sad that she went with her rather than the woman who acted more like a mum than Vida did. 

I won't say anymore about the characters as I don't want to go into too much detail at the risk of spoiling it for other readers but Kathy has done an amazing job at bringing each of the characters to life and regardless of whether you love them or hate them they all played their parts perfectly to bring this fantastic story to life. Well done Kathy!!! 



Congratulations Kathy on an absolutely stunning, unforgettable, heart-breaking beautiful book!!! I am looking forward to reading more of your future books. I would absolutely love to see this book turned into a movie!!! Welcome to my favourite author list and here's to your next success 🥂 



Overall an absolutely unputdownable, stunning, addictive and compelling devastatingly beautiful heart-breaking MUST READ!! 




Genres covered in this book include Family Sagas, Mystery, Fantasy, American Literature, Saga Fiction, Family Saga Fiction, Modern Fiction, Women's Contemporary Fiction, Women's Writers & Fiction, Literary Fiction, Romance Sagas, Women's Romance Fiction, Spiritual & Historical Fiction, Historical Fiction, Saga Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Romance Fiction, amongst others. 




I would recommend this book to the fans of the above as well as fans of Jodi Picoult, Nicolas Sparks, you, your friends, your family, your neighbours and absolutely everybody and anybody!!!!! What are you waiting for??? Grab your copy now!!!



324 pages.



This book is just £4.74 to purchase on kindle and £8.27 in paperback via Amazon at time of review which I think is an absolute bargain for this book!!! 



Rated 5 /5 (I LOVED it ) on Goodreads, Instagram, Amazon UK and Amazon US and on over 30 Facebook pages plus my blog on Facebook. 



Feel free to add me on Goodreads or follow me on my website or Facebook for more reviews 



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[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Luck, by Kathy Biggs, charts the highs and lows of the O’Grady family over the course of 40-50 years. In the 1930s, Irish Darragh buys a farmstead in America’s Midwest and marries local girl Beattie, and together they raise a child, Conrad.

When he grows up, Conrad disappears from his parents’ lives, but they end up raising his daughters Olive and Rose, who go on to marry and have their own children. History repeats itself, though, as Rose goes missing when her son James is three years old, and Olive’s son Ruaridh skips town as a young adult. Where did Conrad, Rose, and Ruaridh go, and what other secrets are members of the family hiding?

I found The Luck very absorbing. Each character is highly distinctive, well-drawn, and complex, and I enjoyed watching their development and seeing how things turned out for them over the course of so many years. While some characters are more likeable than others, I felt sympathy with all of them at different points, for one reason or another.

This novel also has a strong sense of place, both in terms of The Luck itself as the constant hub of the family, and the nearest town, Oaklake. While the area evolves in some ways due to the changing natures of employment and transport over the period covered by the story, the heart of the town remains essentially the same, with its few amenities restricted to one main street, where Olive opens her own general store and tearoom, and the locals socialise in its one bar/diner, the Ponderosa.

As you’d expect, family relationships are a major theme in this book. We see three different types of mother: Beattie, who takes well to the role of motherhood, is heartbroken when she becomes estranged from Conrad, jumps at the chance to raise Olive and Rose, and delights in her grandchildren; Olive and Rose’s mother Vida, who is more than happy to relinquish the girls to their grandparents after Conrad deserts her, so she can pursue a career unhindered; and Olive, who can’t summon much feeling for Ruaridh, and finds caring for him a challenge.

This links in to expectations of women in the mid twentieth century. While Beattie comes closest to the model of the “ideal” mother, she feels like a failure because two of the children she raised - Conrad and Rose - disappear. She judges Vida for deserting Olive and Rose, and feels hurt when Rose establishes a relationship with her mother as a teenager.

Olive, meanwhile, feels like there’s something wrong with her because she doesn’t experience the rush of motherly love she’s “supposed to” towards her son, and wants her life to be about more than caring for him, but she can’t tell anyone she feels this way.

Olive finds herself judged in Oaklake not only for the lack of attention she pays to her baby, but her sharp, straightforward manner and lofty ambitions. She marries young, in line with social expectations, and you can’t help but think she could have been far more happy and fulfilled more of her potential if only she’d been born a few decades later.

The same goes for Rose. While people find her more attractive and palatable than her sister, she makes an unwise early marriage that ties her to Oaklake at a time when she has a promising future in California, and she also feels pressured by Beattie to make a big occasion of her wedding.

The story also prompted me to consider nature versus nurture, with some characters turning out very different from their parents or siblings. It’s understandable, for example, that Ruaridh goes off the rails as a teenager having been neglected by Olive virtually from birth, yet also, Beattie and Darragh find Conrad hard to relate to right from when he’s very small, despite their loving efforts.

Olive and Rose, meanwhile, have little in common - and on the occasions that they do want the same thing, it’s something only one of them can have, ramping up the tension and drama, with far-reaching consequences.

The Luck is an absorbing, multi-generational saga featuring interesting, complex characters and a convincing setting.

[Judith Barrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I say this is an easy book to read I don’t mean it’s light reading. I mean it’s a story that absorbs from the first page, and takes the reader on a ride through four generations of a family who instantly come to life against a background of Midwest America in the era of the earlier twentieth century.

The Luck is not only a family saga – it is a tale that interweaves the characters and their relationships with each other over decades. And, threaded throughout, is a secret.

The characters are fully rounded; they grow and change as life and circumstances alter them. Sometime the timeline leaps forward and the reader is presented with one of the main characters as an older individual. It’s strange (a little like meeting someone in real life after years have passed), and yet it works; it’s understandable. Because, reading what has happened to some of the other characters, how life has affected them, has also changed the the main character in that section of the plot. It makes sense. Hmm… does that make sense? Perhaps it’s just simpler to say that I accepted how the author presents them, because it works.

It’s quite a while since I have been totally engrossed in a book that I read: holding it in one hand while flicking a duster around – and missing the furniture, making the bed – not easy with one hand, and necessitating the odd sitting on the bed to ‘just read the next bit’, cooking – definitely not easy, or safe!

I never give spoilers in my reviews. And usually I dissect the writing to point out the strengths and weakness of the narrative (from a subjective point of view – mine!). But, with The Luck, this feels unnecessary. The makeup of the characters, and the many layers of each that are gradually revealed, the descriptions of the settings, – giving a brilliant sense of place, the dialogue, which without fail, differentiates between every character, all added a wonderful depth to the plot and make this a fascinating read.

Not to mention the ending – ah, a tantalising hint there! There’s nothing for it, you’ll need to read this debut book from Kathy Biggs for yourself.

Yes, I am recommending The Luck. I’m recommending it to any reader who enjoys a cracking story written at a steady pace, and with a writing style that takes the phrase “ suspension of disbelief” to a whole new level. A brilliant read.

[Alex Craigie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that is so well-written and so engaging that you’re left feeling a little bereft when you’ve finished it.
The Luck is a family saga beginning with young Darragh O Grady who leaves Ireland in the 1930s for a life in the US as a crop sprayer. As he flies over an old farmstead he is so drawn to it, he changes career and becomes a farmer.
The era and land have been accurately and beautifully recreated and they provide the backdrop to his life and future family. At his first meeting with the extraordinary Beattie Darling, he shakes her hand and describes it as “Rough and callused like a man’s, it fit into his own like an egg in a nest”. This wonderful book sparkles with fresh, vivid examples like this one, but without slowing down the pace.
Darragh and Beattie’s son Conrad leaves his parents for a life as a sailor, but comes back briefly with his young wife (described as stepping forward “like a whisper”) and her two children. These become the next generation of the book and we’re privileged to see them grow and develop into very different characters. The description of the sisters and their responses to their lives is remarkably drawn:
“If Rose was the ripe peach, full of hot promise, then Olive was last year’s husks – empty and weightless, blowing around alone”.
There is so much insight into the characters that made them very real for me and I was invested in their lives. This isn’t a slow book; things happen and you are carried along with these events. There’s love, lust, honour and betrayal, and events sweep the characters up towards the powerful and unexpected ending.
I shall be looking out for more from this author.

[Karen Mace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm very thankful to a friend who went to a bookshop and asked for a recommendation for me and this was the pick - and once I started reading it I just couldn't put it down!

It's an all encompassing family drama, set over a number of years, centred around the trials and tribulations of a family in America. There's so many twists and turns within the family unit and you can't help but be drawn into the complexities of relationships. From the get go, you get a real sense of the family unit and then as people get older and secrets reveal themselves you discover the impact and there's also mysteries to be solved which are dealt with really beautifully by the author - wonderful writing for a debut novel!

Set around a farm, we watch over the family as they grow, fall in love, have families of their own, set off on their own adventures, wrong choices are made, losses are dealt with and the pain is felt through all the characters, no matter the brave faces they put on. This is one of those books that I want to see made into a miniseries!! A book with something for everyone, and has you feeling all the emotions- highly recommended!!

[Jellybean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Set in Wyoming, USA, and starting in the 1930s it traces one family's history from the arrival of Darragh O'Grady from Ireland & his marriage to the feisty Beattie to the 1960/70s. There are several disappearances: their son Conrad goes off to sea, returning once with wife and child in tow, then vanishes again; their younger granddaughter Rose vanishes without trace; and a mysterious stranger who arrives on the island on the lake also disappears. The characters are deftly drawn and the pace at which the novel moves I found perfect. I was glued to the book, and was completely blindsided by the denouement. Others in my reading group had suspected - perhaps I was being dense or naive but I didn't see it coming. I'm now looking forward to reading the author's second novel Scrap.

[Krista Esta · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Luck" ehk "Õnn" on perekonnalugu 1930ndatel Ameerikasse rännanud Iiri mehest Darraghist, kes ostab endale talu, millele paneb nimeks Õnn. Kahjuks õnne seal peres väga ei jagu, iga põlvkond kogeb oma muresid. Tüüpilisele perekonna loole iseloomulikud teemad: suhtemustrid, õdedevahelised suhted, meie elu määravad valikud ja kinnisideed, katsumuste sekka näpuotsaga rõõme. Ühesõnaga elu.

[Julia Florrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging family saga set in Midwest America. Follows four generations with secrets and surprises galore.

[Jas Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slow narrative about the lives of a family throughout the years, the heartache and trouble they face and how they come together or fall apart.

Not my usual type of book, so I found it quite hard to get into, but I totally imagine this being someone’s perfect, cozy day read!