Lucky You was published by Knopf in 1997. JoLayne Lucks, a Black veterinary technician in the small Florida town of Grange, wins a $14 million share of a $28 million lottery jackpot. Bodean Gazzer, a white supremacist militia leader, holds the other winning ticket — but $14 million isn’t enough to fund his survivalist compound. He and his partner Chub steal JoLayne’s ticket at gunpoint.
JoLayne teams up with Tom Krome, a cynical journalist investigating a local fraud (the Virgin Mary’s face appearing in a water stain on a motel window, which is drawing pilgrims and their money). Their pursuit of the stolen ticket becomes a road novel through Hiaasen’s Florida — a landscape of strip malls, swampland, gun shows, and evangelical tent revivals.
The novel is sharper politically than most Hiaasen: the militia subplot satirized the 1990s wave of anti-government paramilitary movements, and the lottery itself becomes a metaphor for the American fantasy that wealth arrives through luck rather than labor or crime.
Collecting Lucky You
First edition (Knopf, New York, 1997): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $15–$35
- Signed first: $40–$80