Lucky Strike by Nancy Zafris

A Lonely Strike
Lucky Strike by Nancy Zafris
Reviewed by Andrée Kirk

With names like Dewey Durnford, Jimmy Splendid, and Miss Dazzle--and things like flower-print muu-muus, metal tracking equipment, maraschino cherries, a silver Airstream trailer and the red pickup that pulls it, author Nancy Zafris successfully recreates the Atomic Age in her new novel, Lucky Strike. Zafris, The Kenyon Review's fiction editor and the author of a previous novel and a short story collection, sets her story in the early 1950's: A young widow with her two children seek to get rich quick by prospecting for uranium in Utah. Beth, 10, and Charlie, 12, follow their mother Jean into the desert from Ohio, accompanied by an assemblage of eccentric men they meet along the way. It is a dysfunctional family: the three plus a variety of creepy uncles, all reaching for the same goal--to become "uraniumaires."

In various combinations, Lucky Strike's several characters explore the land and stake claims while trying to keep cool and entertain themselves in between. On occasion, one character will have a crush on another, or someone will be punished for obnoxious behavior. The setting is ripe for fruitful interaction--but unfortunately the novel falls short.

Despite Zafris's talent for visual details, not much happens in the novel. Although this may be part of Zafris's point (when in the Utah desert, one cannot expect a lot in terms of actual events), the periods of inaction slow the story down significantly and do little to further the development of the characters. Most of the men are not especially distinct from one another and are rather forgettable, except for their outward creepiness. Even mysterious Native American characters, who early on are suggested to be important to the story, never fully materialize.

Part of the problem is that the characters tend to keep to themselves and maintain an emotional distance from one another, preventing the reader from getting to know who these people really are.

For instance, illness is treated in the novel in a very guarded way, which certainly reflects the thinking of that era but does not ever go beyond it. Jean's son Charlie suffers from a respiratory illness that requires him to be "pounded" several times a day to clear his lungs, and there is mention of his stay in a mist tent. Despite the obvious nature of Charlie's situation, his mother refuses to admit he has a serious illness: She hides the issue when one of the more direct characters asks about Charlie out of concern, and within the family itself the illness is referred to as "the visitor" or "the v-word." Yet despite all his suffering I hardly know more about Charlie by the end of the novel than I did at the beginning.

At the same time, when Zafris inhabits Jean's point of view there are a few moments of satisfyingly good writing, such as the description of Dr. Randolph becoming flirty and macho around women, but then killing the moment by "biting into his sandwich like a little boy." Another time, as Jean is lying down in her secondhand tent at night she wonders if the perfume coming off the tent does not belong to the woman who sold it to her, but rather a mistress of the woman's husband. She thinks back to that woman's negativity and guesses at what she must have been feeling.

Interestingly, the novel's general ambiance of conservatism is occasionally interrupted by Jean's deeply honest admittances and observations on love and relationships. She contemplates how unhappy she had been as a married woman, that married people are either boring or sad. In a highly unusual twist, she admits she had been much more satisfied by a "kindred erotic love for her children" than by her husband. In a very short chapter early on in the novel, one of Charlie's pounding sessions ends with the two of them gasping loudly, Jean lying on her back in her sweat-soaked blouse, her son in her arms. She compares sessions such as these to making love with her husband after a fight. No other scene in the novel is as emotional or inspired; Jean is intensely maternal while also being erotically suggestive and disturbing. Zafris has gifted Jean with the ability to reflect deeply on her situation and her surroundings, and I would have loved for Zafris to treat the rest of the novel with such acute attention.

Overall, Lucky Strike is a very uneven book, mostly made up of missed opportunities to communicate. Jean wants to tell her children about their deceased father but never does. Men want to show their affection for women but are unable to articulate their feelings. Perhaps the point of the novel was that, given the combination of the formality of that era, plus the greed contrasted with the sparseness of the surroundings, these characters are on a hopeless and soulless journey in search of wealth despite tremendous risks. However I was unable to connect with the characters, making that moral an unsatisfying one. The slow and choppy pace of the novel never held me in a hypnotic trance. Instead I was aching for something eventful and meaningful to occur. I did appreciate the occasional inspired moments, but, unfortunately, those were few and far between.