Tough Luck, by Sandra Dallas

The resilience of a young woman determined to find her father in the gold crazed Colorado territory.

Tough Luck is not at all about Luck, or the lack thereof. The story is one of a fourteen year old girl named Mary Haidie Richards who with her ten year old brother named Boots sets off in 1863 from an orphanage in Illinois to find a father who’d abandoned them four years earlier to strike it rich prospecting for gold in Colorado. They embark upon an adventure that starts with an escape from their orphanage, includes a rigorous crossing of the heartland on a mule train, and culminates with a high stakes mission to recover for their father a gold mine out of which he was cheated by an unsavory banker.

The plot of Tough Luck is designed to develop the character of the teen aged girl Haidie, who narrates the story. After her mother dies, Haidie’s older brother Cheet sells their farm and puts Haidie and Boots into an orphanage, lying that he is on his way to the seminary to become a priest. Evidently lying is in the genes, because Haidie is an accomplished liar also. She cons her way through an escape from the orphanage with Boots, and then, posing as a boy, convinces a freighter named Jacob Crowfoot to take them aboard their mule wagon to Nebraska. By the time they reach Omaha, they’ve joined forces with a gambler named Corny and with his help overcome an attack by robbers. From Omaha, Haidie and Boots join a wagon train headed for Denver, a journey that tests Haidie’s determination and hones her lying skills, while presenting more life threatening events, including an attack by Indians.

Western stories abound with young men overcoming seemingly unsurmountable odds to reach a heroic end. What is brilliant about Tough Luck is that the hero is a young woman. Sandra Dallas brilliantly depicts Haidie’s character, making her at one moment headstrong, at another endearing, and, finally, resilient. Most importantly, the author never lets the reader forget that Haidie is a young woman. Half way through the story, Haidie reflects on her circumstances: “Sometimes I almost forgot I was a girl. When we reached Omaha with Jake, I could have put on a dress, since nobody was looking for runaway orphans anymore. But . . . being a boy was more fun. Nobody told me to mind my manners or keep to the wagons or that young ladies shouldn't run across the prairie the way I did.” Haidie’s continuing perspective about the state she is in insures that a reader will keep turning the pages. And her adaptation to her circumstances makes Haidie heroic.

As with all Sandra Dallas novels, the story is about the characters. Of course, there a plot full of intrigue and thrill. Indian attacks, horse thieving, and all kinds of trickery. But the people embedded in these actions are colorful and paint an excellent picture for the hard times that existed in the Colorado Territory at the time. To name a few, there are Jacob, Teresa, Corny, Ben Bondurant, Emily Tappan, the sisters, Miss Arvilla and Miss Lizzie, their brother Edwin, and even Haidie’s horse, old Outlaw. And there are plenty of evil people as well, particularly Joel Thacker. The author cleverly weaves them into a plot that leads to a finale a reader will be unable to forget.

What may be the best attribute about Tough Luck is its paucity of moralizing. No homage is made to gender identity. No fault is found with Haidie’s lying, particularly her pretending to be a boy. She refuses at the end to analyze her actions from a social perspective, and even though “defrocked” and willingly attending the “fancy academy” for girls, she continues to embrace what she learned about herself on her journey. She did what she had to do. She succeeded. No luck needed.