"My father's wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us." Thus begins this remarkable novel, by one of our greatest contemporary writers. Authors and other fellow readers we trust have been pressing Amy Bloom's books onto us for years; now it's our turn to do you this service. Her books of short stories Come to Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You were finalists for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, respectively, and fans include Michael Cunningham, Colum McCann, and many of us at Daedalus. In this "bighearted rambunctious ... bustling tale of American reinvention" (Washington Post) we meet half-sisters Iris (the hopeful star) and Eva (the sidekick) who, disappointed by their families, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris's ambitions take the pair from small-town Ohio to sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island. With their friends in places high and low, Iris and Eva stumble and shine through a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war, in locations as disparate as Brooklyn's beauty parlors and London's West End.

"Sharp, sparsely beautiful.... The book's opening lines [are] destined to be quoted in many a classroom for their perfection."—Janet Maslin, New York Times

"Bloom's book beautifully explores the myriad ways in which we define and create the American family, and ultimately how we carve our path when life keeps throwing obstacles in our way.... Lucky Us is a beautiful novel with complicated and layered messages about survival, family and obligation, but ultimately it is a novel about hope and possibility, when we finally understand that we are more than the sum of our circumstances."—Minneapolis Star Tribune