Lucky Red

Chapter 1

Some years ago, in Dodge, I was a sporting woman. This was before I took up my current trade, back when the prairie ran with cattle like a river runs with fish. It s different now, of course, but then, so am I. I didn t mind whoring ­it can be good work in the right house ­but it demands a great deal of keeping still, and I m one of those itchy, fidgety sorts who s always looking out the window or glancing toward the door, so it was only a matter of time until I had to move on. Most rambling types like to act as if they just woke up one morning and lit out, turning their backs to all and sundry, but this is just good storytelling. The truth is that making your own way happens piecemeal, like a baby who scoots, then crawls, then eventually toddles her way right out the cabin door where she s as likely to be snatched up by coyotes as she is to seek her fortune; either way, once she gets loose, there ll be no getting her back. All of which is to say that though I ended up a pretty girl in boy s clothes, mounted like a woman and armed like a man, I started much smaller and simpler, and mostly alone.

Before I was a whore in Kansas, I was a poor drunkard s daughter in Arkansas. My pa wasn t a bad man, but it was far too easy for circumstances to get the upper hand on him. He called himself unlucky, but the losing hands dealt him were too frequent and too numerous to be mere turns of fate. I will admit that at times, events truly were beyond his control: first Ma died having me, then came the Brothers War, then he was on the losing side, and then he lost what was left of the farm to nursing his broken heart. But there were other misadventures that showed me, if not him, that there s more to this life than luck, even bad luck.

First there were the mustangs, which he bought cheap and wild but lacked the will to break and was forced to sell off cheaper and wilder. Then the sheep flock, whose feed he let rot so they all went mad when they ate it. When

Claudia Cravens has a BA in literature from Bard College and participated in Catapult’s yearlong novel generator. Lucky Red is her first novel.

A Western like you ve never seen before: a story of reinvention, sex work, found family, and queer self-discovery. Harper s Bazaar, Best Queer Reads of 2023

Lucky Red is a brilliant queer feminist reimagining of the western genre complete with an ingenious narrative twist and stellar prose. Set in Dodge City in 1877, the story takes the setting of a brothel from its usual place as a backdrop in the genre to its deserved place in center stage, filling the novel with nuanced and fascinating sex worker characters. Watching the protagonist Bridget evolve from a disillusioned sixteen-year-old orphan to a powerful woman with a thirst for vengeance is wonderful to witness. Autostraddle

Lucky Red is the Western I never knew I needed where all the most fascinating misfit characters usually pushed to the fringes take their rightful places center stage. Claudia Cravens strikes the perfect balance here queer, feminist, subversive, and a good old-fashioned freight train of an adventure story. Sara Novi , author of True Biz

I dare anyone not to thrill to this book! Lucky Red takes the Western genre and shakes the life back into it. Explosive and intimate, dense with human connection, and above all seized with the need for freedom of the queer self: This is storytelling that grinds its characters in its grip, then throws them into the air to take wondrous flight. I loved it to bits. Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the Sun

A subversive take on Western fiction: a deftly told, absorbing coming-of-age story about a young woman s life in a Dodge City brothel, and one of the most heartfelt and thrilling books I ve read in ages. Lauren Wilkinson, author of American Spy

A thrilling and surprising story of deep human hunger and desire, the ache that lives in all of us, and the sometimes violent lengths that we will go to feel seen and loved and understood. Lynn Steger Strong, author of Flight

A renegade