Summer of My Amazing Luck

'Toews’s debut is a tart, affectionate look at welfare mothers...Toews is especially good on the “rollicking, happy, impoverished family” of the projects [and] scathing about the humiliations of poverty.' New York Times

Lucy and her eight-month-old son live in a Winnipeg housing project filled with single mothers on the dole. Still dealing with her own mother’s sudden death, and new to the ever-multiplying complications of life on welfare, Lucy strikes up a friendship with her neighbour, Lish. On the whole, they’re pretty happy . . . But Lucy wants to make sure they stay happy. And she has a plan.

Told with Toews’s signature scalding wit and deep compassion, Summer of my Amazing Luck is a brilliantly funny book about the intricacies of friendship, grief, and poverty.


'[A] picaresque account of two welfare moms having loopy adventures and getting by in the city... The novel’s voice [is] amused, warm, curious, alive on the page.' The New Yorker