The Higher Power of Lucky is a novel by Susan Patron. Lucky, a 10 year old girl in Hard Pan, a small town in California, lives with his father’s first wife, Brigitte, after the death of her mother, with her friends Lincoln and Miles. Lucky thinks Brigitte is going to return to France because she sees her reading a book of restaurant management, so she escapes to make Brigitte stay to look for her. She packed a “survival kit backpack”, most of which were non-essential items (the only really essential item was water and food, there was nothing to build a shelter with). She also, angry at Brigitte, took items from her. She then returns after people discover her, finds that Brigitte was going to legally adopt Lucky, and then Brigitte, with the help of Lucky, opens a cafe in Hard Pan, which becomes popular with the residents.
If you assume something about someone without asking them what they really mean, it could be very different from what you would initially expect. For example, Lucky thinks that Brigitte is going to return to France after seeing her suitcase and her taking a course in restaurant management (especially after her seeing a snake, and various other happenings), and so runs away to make her stay. However, when she returns, she discovers that she was going to permanently stay in Hard Pan as Lucky’s legal guardian instead of making Lucky an orphan. A lot of this happens in life. Assumptions are 99% of the time not what is actually going to happen, and 90% of the time drastically different, even opposite of what was going to happen. They also undermine trust, if two or more people in a group assume something about someone else, and they don’t agree or are even the opposite of one another.
People should not just resort to things like a “Higher Power”. In fact, a Higher Power isn’t the thing that Lucky was after, meaning something that determines what she wants to be and do. Those “twelve-step meetings” are for substance addiction, and a “Higher Power” is what happens when you recover from that addiction. The sort of higher power that Lucky was after doesn’t exist, and finding what oneself is meant to be is the result of work and adjustment, as well as trying different options to consider which one is the best. Everything in the book stems from the higher power, as well as the “rock bottom” that Lucky “hit” when she discovers the suitcase, and, not even looking at the contents, thinks that Brigitte is going to return to France and tries to get Brigitte to stay by running away.
Lucky, despite the name, is not lucky. In fact, quite the opposite. Lucky lives in a town where most people are poor and receive free food from the government (which everyone agrees isn’t good), and she also thinks that Brigitte is going to return to France, and only finding out that she isn’t at the very end of the book, after she has already gone quite a distance! While most of this is based on Lucky assuming things about the suitcase and the book, she shouldn’t have gotten into this and Brigitte could have just told her what she was doing and planning. Lucky, although just a regular kid, gets into this situation through a simple misunderstanding with Brigitte.
The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron has a simple story that follows into much more than just that story. Lucky starts out a regular kid who eavesdrops on the twelve-step meetings and is interested in the notion of a “higher power”, which is different from what she thinks it is. A higher power isn’t something that helps a person do better, it’s how to learn to move on from the bad things in the past. Lucky didn’t have any bad things in the past or “rock bottom” occurences, but she still thinks she did, and therefore runs away. This is what happens when a simple misunderstanding occurs, but one that causes one to take a drastic decision to try to fix the thing that wouldn’t happen in the first place.
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