Lucky Red

Lucky Red (2023) by Claudia Cravens caught my eye when I read this review, but it took a year for me to finally listen to it. I was completely blown away by the voice of the main character, Bridget. We recently read the classic western True Grit, by Charles Portis, for my book club, and Bridget’s determination and voice reminded me a lot of Mattie from True Grit, if she had become a sporting woman and fallen in love with a female gunfighter.

In the 1870s, Bridget is sixteen, an only child who takes care of her drunkard father, as her mother died giving birth to her. She manages to make do, doing chores for other people when she can get away, and her father doesn’t beat her, but dissolves into his own grief when he’s drunk. One day he comes home with a wagon and a couple of mules, which he has sold the farm to get, and they set off west. Tragedy befalls him when they’ve stopped at a sod house in an oasis in the prairie, so Bridget makes her way to the nearest town, Dodge City, Kansas on their remaining mule.

After selling her belongings in exchange for a week at a rooming house, Bridget wanders, looking for work, when a madam at the Buffalo Queen whorehouse, sees her, and offers her a meal and a chance to work, as they’ve been in need of a redhead. Seeing as she has to eat, Bridget becomes a sporting woman.

The Buffalo Queen isn’t so bad as whorehouses go–it’s run by two women, and she meets Constance, a widow who reads at every chance she can get, who becomes her closest friend. The worst of the fights and nastiest of the cowboys steer clear, especially after they have the protection of the Sheriff Jim Bonnie, who is fond of redheads.

Then a notorious outlaw is captured by a gunslinger family, the Lees, and he is to be hanged in Dodge City. Spartan Lee, the sister, manages to catch him as he tries to escape the noose, and Bridget is fascinated by the female gunslinger.

That’s when things start to fall apart. I couldn’t stop listening. It was thankfully free from anti-fat bias, and so I consider it weight-neutral. I highly recommend it, but be warned, it is not a romance (though there are plenty of spicy scenes) and it is definitely a western (many people die). Thanks to Claudia Cravens for writing this queer, feminist, coming-of-age western! I so enjoyed it!