![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Lucky-Us.jpg\" "\\"Lucky-Us\\"")
<\/a>It\u2019s 1939. Eva Logan is a 12-year-old girl who lives with her mother, a waitress, in the Midwest. Her charming father usually visits on Thursdays and Sundays, bearing gifts and exuding good cheer. In the way that children do, Eva accepts this arrangement as normal.<\/p>\nThen, as the book\u2019s opening line tells us: \u201cMy father\u2019s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s in it for Eva is a new life. Her mother leaves the little girl and her suitcase at her father\u2019s house in Ohio and never comes back. Eva\u2019s father, it turns out, had another life, with a job as a college professor, a wife with inherited money, a nice house \u2013 and another daughter, Eva\u2019s half-sister, Iris, who is 16 and beautiful. Edgar Acton takes Eva in, but makes up a story rather than acknowledging her as his daughter.<\/p>\n
Iris, clever, scheming and ambitious, intends to get away from her freeloading father and head for Hollywood to make her fame and fortune. Their dad, it seems, having run into some difficulties, is in the habit of stealing money from the stash Iris earns by entering various competitions.<\/p>\n
Iris takes Eva with her when she makes her break from Ohio to Hollywood, where Iris soon finds some of the success she seeks. But the decadence gets the better of her, and an indiscretion with a rising starlet gets her on the blacklist.<\/p>\n
By then, the girls\u2019 father has resurfaced, and the three, along with Francisco, a gay Mexican makeup artist who has befriended them, head east for new jobs on Long Island. \u00a0Edgar is going to be a butler in the home of a wealthy Italian family, and Iris will be the governess. Francisco, who has relatives in Brooklyn, opens a barbershop. Eva helps out in a beauty parlor, where she eventually begins reading Tarot cards for well-to-do ladies.<\/p>\n
Things go pretty well, until Iris falls in love with the household\u2019s cook, Reenie. By then, the United States has been drawn into World War II, and events set in motion by Iris\u2019 passion have far-reaching effects, including the arrest as a spy of Reenie\u2019s husband, Gus, who is of German descent.<\/p>\n
To go on with the story is to tell too much, a sin of which Bloom is not guilty as a novelist. She manages to advance her story beautifully through the effective use of plot twists that come as surprises but are completely credible in context. She does not belabor the day-to-day life when things run smoothly, nor does she overdo introspection and soul-searching. By telling less, she reveals more.<\/p>\n
Some of the later story is told through letters, many from Iris, who by then is living in London, to Eva, and also to her from Gus, Reenie\u2019s husband, who has long been young Eva\u2019s friend.<\/p>\n
The story unfolds against the rich backdrop of the 1940s, a time of great changes and social upheaval as Americans moved from the Depression era to World War II and beyond. Eva\u2019s family \u2013 however you define that \u2013 is not the only one to include misfits and a mixture of previously segregated or ostracized people.<\/p>\n
Eva \u2013 used by others, a smart girl who never even finishes high school \u2013 may not seem \u201clucky\u201d for much of the novel, but by the time this lively, surprising, sometimes sad, often funny story reaches its end, the adjective seems perfectly fitting.<\/p>\n
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2 A.M. at THE CAT\u2019S PAJAMAS. By Marie-Helene Bertino. Read by Angela Goethals. Random House Audio. Also available in print from Crown.<\/p>\n