The Little Lucky
A Family Geography
By Gail Wells
“When you live in an old house, the remodeling and rehabilitating never end. I guess the same is true when you belong to a family. Most families are loving in their way, and most are troubled in their way. That was the way it was with the family I come from.”
A tumble-down schoolhouse and a loving, troubled family are at the heart of The Little Lucky, a reflection of the many ways in which a place can shape and be shaped by family. In discerning and nimble prose, Gail Wells tells the story of how she and her husband moved from their tiny Seattle apartment to her grandfather’s house, formerly an abandoned schoolhouse, near the Little Luckiamute River of western Oregon. They work earnestly to transform the slantwise structure into a home and discover both joy and frustration along the way.
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