32

by Donald R. Lehmann

There’s something fishy in the state of 32 keeps getting selected. It happens every night. The public wants to know what’s going on, the media want to know who’s to blame, and the tall and stately Claudia Higginson loses her job as lottery drawing hostess. Numerologists, math professors and Native American activists step forward to explain the situation, and the government sets up a commission. But 32 goes right on winning. Narrator Monk Lewis puts it in sports "32 is making a statement! Delivering a message! He wants respect!" remarks that infuriate his 29-year-old daughter, Karen, and his friend Hector Martinez. She’s a gender equity specialist, and he’s a middle-aged Mexican-American grandfather. In their eyes, 32 is just a number, a symbolic representation of a value. They claim that numbers do not have personalities, but how would they know? Neither of them plays the lottery. Of course 32 has a personality. Why else would it continue to win?

284 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 2003