Beginner's Luck : A Novel

“Laura Pedersen delivers . . . Throughout, you can’t help but think how hilarious some of the scenes would play on the big screen.”—The Hartford Courant

“There could be no doubt left in anyone’s mind that my life had all the makings of a country-and-western song.”

The second of seven children (with another on the way), Hallie Palmer has one dream: to make it to Vegas. Normally blessed with an uncanny gift for winning at games of chance, she’s just hit a losing streak. She’ s been kicked out of the casino she frequents during school hours, lost all her money for a car on a bad bet at the track, and has been grounded by her parents. Hallie decides the time as come to cut her losses.

Answering an ad in the local paper, she lands a job as yard person at the elegant home of the sixty-ish Mrs. Olivia Stockton, a wonderfully eccentric rebel who scribes acclaimed poetry along with the occasional soft-core porn story. Under the same wild roof is Olivia’s son, Bernard, an antiques dealer and gourmet cook who turns out mouthwatering cuisine and scathing witticisms, and Gil, Bernard’s lover, whose down-to-earth sensibilities provide a perfect foil to the Stocktons’ outrageous joie de vivre. Here, in this anything-goes household, Hallie has found a new family. And she’s about to receive the education of her life.

From a wonderful new voice in fiction comes the freshest and funniest novel to barrel down the pike since Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. In Beginner’s Luck, Laura Pedersen introduces us to the endearing oddballs and eccentrics of Cosgrove County, Ohio, who burst to life and steal our hearts–and none more so than Hallie Palmer, sixteen, savvy, and wise beyond her years, a young woman who knows life is a gamble . . . and sometimes you have to bet the house.

Laura Pedersen is an author and playwright from Buffalo, New York. After finishing high school in 1983, she moved to Manhattan and began working on the American Stock Exchange, later spending the better part of the 1990s writing for The New York Times. In 1994, President Clinton honored her as one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans. She has appeared on varioius TV shows, including Oprah, Good Morning America, Primetime Live, and The Late Show with David Letterman. In 2001, her first novel, Going Away Party, won the Three Oaks Prize for fiction. Her other books include Beginner's Luck, The Big Shuffle, Heart's Desire, and Last Call. Laura lives in New York City.