Tough Luck

A Novel

De: Sandra Dallas

Narrado por: Mia Hutchinson-Shaw

In this homage to True Grit, a young woman makes a perilous journey west in 1863 in search of her gold-mining father.

"...exhilarating and hard to resist." —The Washington Post on Westering Women

After their mother dies, Haidie Richards and her younger brother, Boots, are put to work in an orphanage. Their father left four years earlier to find a gold mine in Colorado Territory, and since then he’s sent only three letters. Still, Haidie is certain that he is alive, has struck gold, and will soon send for them.

But patience is not one of Haidie’s virtues and soon she and her brother make a break for it. Boots and Haidie, disguised as a boy, embark on a dangerous journey deep into Western territory. Along the way, Haidie learns fast not only how to handle mules, oxen, and greedy men, but also that you are better off in a community. Hers includes a card shark, independent “spinster” sisters, and a very fierce dog. Once she arrives in Colorado and finds out the truth about her father, Haidie will need all her new friends for a get-even plot worthy of The Sting.

Filled with vivid period detail, colorful characters, and the irreverent voice of our scrappy heroine, Tough Luck celebrates both the tenacity of youth and the persistence of the heart in the great American West.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

©2025 Sandra Dallas (P)2025 Macmillan Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Calling your novel an homage to True Grit is bold, but Dallas' work will humble the naysayers. Haidie Richards is every bit as smart, funny, capable, and cunning as True Grit's Mattie Ross... A rollicking western with an unforgettable heroine." —Booklist

"Haidie, a self-confessed liar and sharp judge of character, is an entertaining narrator, and Dallas keeps the story moving at a brisk trot. Readers in the mood for an old-fashioned western need look no further."
—Publishers Weekly

"Fourteen year-old Haidie is smarter than the men in her life, and she'll need every ounce of her wit and grit if she is to deliver her little brother Boots to the father who abandoned their family for the promise of gold. On prose that rides west at an easy canter, Tough Luck keeps its reader tight to the stirrups."
—John Larison, author of Whiskey When We're Dry