From the Bookshelf of Melbourne Library Service…

[close] A 2014 novel by Jane Smiley. It is the first in a planned trilogy of novels about an Iowa family over the course of generations. It was longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award.
Some Luck is the first of a projected trilogy called The Last Hundred Years – a title that we can take literally. In this opening volume, we follow the story of the Langdons, an Iowan farming family, from 1920 to 1953, with a chapter for each year, a period that takes us from the aftermath of the first world war via the Depression and the second world war to the era of the atomic bomb.
We see these events through the novel’s shifting point of view, through the eyes of different characters.
There are dramatic childbirths, meandering romances, long lives and unexpected deaths, all set against the gradual encroachment of modernity.
It is not a simple novel and is at heart a look at what family can mean across generations.