Kennedy, Shirley

Looking for Lucky

JILLIAN DAHL of Denver has a life that's as good as it gets. She's beautiful, has a successful career, a luxurious lifestyle and a rich fiancé. But her world starts to crumble when her younger sister, Karlin, a world-class skier, is diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma, a fast, deadly kind of bone cancer. On the day Karlin learns she must lose her leg, Lucky, her beloved black Labrador retriever, runs away in a blizzard from Jillian's back yard. Jillian feels responsible. She's torn between staying by Karlin's bedside and searching for her lost dog. Eventually her desperate search takes her to San Francisco where she meets, and falls in love with, Travis Kerrrigan, animal activist who heads WEELA (We Especially Love Animals). One of WEELA's goals is to inspect and document atrocities committed at the Linderman Laboratories of Santa Marta, where animals are poorly treated and subjected to horrible experiments. More than once, Jillian just misses finding Lucky, who, through a series of mishaps, is designated a "trash dog" and drawn ever closer to the Linderman Laboratories. His plight touches many people along the way. Looking for Lucky is aimed at animal lovers everywhere. In part, it's about an animal activist group similar in some, but not all ways, to groups like PETA and ALF. But there's much more to the book, like the stories of two alcoholics that have different endings, one good, one shockingly sad. Like wine tasting in Sonoma County--skiing at Winter Park, Colorado--the giant Sequoias in the Sierra Nevada Mountains--beautiful San Francisco--a casino in Lake Tahoe. Jillian's search for her sister's dog takes her on a life-changing journey. She will never be the same, and neither will Travis Kerrigan.