Answers to Lucky

by Howard Owen

Driven by their father to become successful, twin brothers Tom Ed and Jack are torn apart when Jack contracts polio and is cruelly dismissed as useless by the family, and years later he vows to reestablish himself. Reprint.

224 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1996

About the author

Howard Owen was born March 1, 1949, in Fayetteville, N.C. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1971, journalism) and has a master's degree from Virginia Commonwealth University (1981, English).
He and his wife since 1973, Karen Van Neste Owen (the former publisher of Van Neste Books), live in Richmond, Va. He was a newspaper reporter and editor for 44 years.
Owen won The Dashiell Hammett Prize for crime literature in the United States and Canada for Oregon Hill, his 10th novel.
His first novel, "Littlejohn," was written in 1989, when he was 40. It was bought by The Permanent Press and published in 1992. Random House bought it from The Permanent Press and reissued it as a Villard hardcover in 1993 and a Vintage Contemporary paperback in 1994. It was nominated for the Abbey Award (American Booksellers) and Discovery (Barnes & Noble) award for best new fiction. It has sold, in all, more than 50,000 copies. It has been printed in Japanese, French and Korean; it has been a Doubleday Book Club selection; audio and large-print editions have been issued, and movie option rights have been sold.
His second novel, "Fat Lightning," came out as a Permanent Press book in 1994. It was bought by HarperCollins and was reissued as a Harper Perennial paperback in 1996. It received a starred review from Publishers' Weekly.
His third novel, "Answers to Lucky," was published by HarperCollins as a hardcover in 1996 and as a paperback in 1997. It received favorable reviews in The New York Times, Southern Living, GW, Publishers' Weekly, the Atlanta Constitution, the Baltimore Sun, the Memphis Commercial Appeal and numerous other publications. It was included in "The Best Novels of the Nineties: A Reader’s Guide."
His fourth novel, "The Measured Man," was published in hardcover by HarperCollins in 1997. It was praised in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Publishers' Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, the Raleigh News & Observer, the Orlando Sentinel, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and many other publications. It was one of the LA Times Book Reviews’ "Recommended Titles" for 1997. It was included in "The Best Novels of the Nineties: A Reader’s Guide."
Owen's fifth novel, "Harry and Ruth," was published by The Permanent Press in September of 2000 to critical acclaim from Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly and various weekly publications.
His sixth novel, "The Rail," was published in April of 2002. It is about (among other things) baseball and the parable of the talents. Owen won the 2002 Theresa Pollack Award for Words.
His seventh novel, "Turn Signal," was about a man whose muse drives him either to madness or to the best move he's ever made in his life. It came out in 2004 and was a Booksense selection for July of 2004.
His eighth novel, "Rock of Ages," is something of a sequel to his first novel, "Littlejohn." Georgia McCain returns to her hometown years after her father’s death to sell the family farm and finds herself immersed in baby-boomer guilt and a murder mystery. It was a Booksense pick for July of 2006.

His ninth novel, "The Reckoning," about ghosts of the ’60s, came out in late 2010 and received very positive reviews from, among others, Publishers Weekly and the New York Journal of Books.
His short story, "The Thirteenth Floor," part of "Richmond Noir," came out in early 2010.
The protagonist of “The Thirteenth Floor,” Willie Black, also is at the center of Owen’s 10th novel, “Oregon Hill,” which came in July of 2012 to very positive reviews in The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and elsewhere. It's also an audio book.

Willie starred in future Owen novels: The Philadelphia Quarry (2013), Parker Field (2014), The Bottom (2015), Grace (2016) and The Devil's Triangle (2017). His 16th novel, Annie's Bones, comes out in April of 2018.

Reviews

[Jonathan Gruber · Rating 1 out of 5]

had potential as a good family/political drama, but just got boring.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lucky and Tom Ed Sweatt, twins who grew up in western North Carolina, have taken very different paths in life. Now, after years of semi-estrangement, Tom Ed is running for Governor and needs his brother to drive the campaign bus. Interspersed with the narration are flashbacks prompted by the various present-time events on the campaign trail. The Sweatt family's back story is revealed piecemeal, saving the most sensational events for the end chapters, although they are teasingly referred to earlier in the book. For example, Lucky mentions in the second or third chapter that he left town in 1963 after getting 'bailed out' of jail. We don't learn why he was in jail until near the end of the book.
The present-time narration is told using the present tense, so when the (third person omnicient) narrator says, "Lucky dives to Greensboro" we know we are reading about current action. If the narrator were to say, "Lucky drove to Greensboro," he would have been talking about events from the past. The "present" in this book is 1992. It is a good bit jarring for the reader to be switching tenses like this without any other common conventions such as a page break or chapter break, or even an italicized dateline to indicate that we have traveled back in time. I don't know why this bothered me so much, but it did.
Besides that, the story was pretty average. It didn't hold any big surprises, and the 'tragic end' of the campaign was telegraphed rather early in the book. As events unfolded it was easy to infer what the tragedy was going to be. I was also not terribly attached to these characters, and found that I really couldn't care less what eventually happened to them. In fact, I was actively rooting against one or two of the main characters. That may be completely due to my own personal politics, however. Overall, I thought this book was so-so. If one is either from or more actively interested in the south, it might be a more engaging read.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 100 pages were a little tough getting into, but that probably had more to do with my busy schedule than the actual quality of the story. I can say that because of the last half of the book. As good as it gets, and even though you can kind of see it coming, the way the story and characters play out is very satisfying if you're a hard worker and root for the blue-collar guy.