FernFolio

After her father’s death in a mining accident, Maggie Sullivan, her sister, Elly, and their mother must leave their cosy home and go to live with Aunt Hortense, because houses in the small mining town perched up in the mountains of British Columbia are reserved for miners and their families. For a young girl still grieving her father’s loss, saying good-bye to her best friend, Abigail, her favourite haunts in and around the community, and the home which holds so many happy memories is wrenching, but the thought of leaving behind her dog, Lucky, is more than Maggie can contemplate. Given to her by her Pa, after he found the abandoned pup caught in a leg-hold trap, Maggie loves Lucky and, since her father’s death, believes that the dog is the only soul left who really knows and loves her in return. But Aunt Hortense runs a boarding house and has made it clear that, while she welcomes Thelma Sullivan and her daughters, there is no room for an exuberant three-legged dog accustomed to roaming.
Maggie tries to find Lucky a new home among her classmates at school and around town, but, in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s, food is hard to come by and no one has the time or money to look after a dog who will never earn his keep. In desperation, she confronts Mr. Winters, the miner owner, and demands that she and her family be allowed to remain, angrily reminding him that his mine has killed her father, before Mr. Winters loses his temper and strikes Lucky, who has rushed at him to defend Maggie. Later, a rather contrite Mr. Winters suggests to Maggie that she go and speak to Louie Jenkins about taking Lucky. Maggie is dismayed by the mine owner’s suggestion, because Louie Jenkins, who lives in Pig Valley and tends to mine ponies who are too ill to work, is called Crazy Louie, and townsfolk whisper frightening stories about him. However, determined to find a good home for Lucky, she sets off to find and meet the mysterious Louie. She encounters, instead, two boys, Jock and Davy, class bullies, who taunt her and threaten Lucky. When the confrontation results in Maggie tumbling off a cliff, the boys take off and Lucky finds Crazy Louie, who takes the girl back to his cabin.
Maggie discovers that Crazy Louie is a wild-looking man with a badly-disfigured face, whose speech is hard, at times, to understand, and whose strangled laughter sounds like barking. She finds out that he is prone to pointing his shot gun at people who arrive uninvited, but that he is oddly shy for someone accused by others as having gotten away with murder. Oddly enough, Lucky takes to Crazy Louie, deeply wounding Maggie with his apparent betrayal. Odder still, the strange and frightening and gentle man seems to understand Maggie better than she understands herself, and might be the one who can help her say goodbye to her past and move on into the future.
Dianne Maycock has written a lovely story about a young girl’s relationship with her dead father, a loving, yet practical dog, and a man who sees into the hearts of them both.
FernFolio Editor