From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, a soaring, soulful novel for readers of Daisy Jones and The Six about a folk musician who rises to fame across our changing times.

LUCKY
by Jane Smiley
Knopf, April 2024)
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Before Jodie Rattler became a folk sensation, she was just a little girl who struck lucky at a racetrack. That roll of two-dollar bills she won has never left her side since. Jodie comes of age in recording studios, backstage, and on tour, and tries to hold her own in the wake of Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell. Yet it feels like something is missing.

Full of atmosphere, shot through with longing and exuberance, romance and rock’n’roll, Lucky is a colorful portrait of one woman’s journey in search of herself.

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.