Three Times Lucky

The young adult novel Three Times Lucky by author Sheila Turnage became a bestseller and won the Newbery Medal award in 2013. Told in the first person by an amateur sixth-grade detective, the novel combines a comic take on the Southern Gothic and mystery genres. Centering on the investigation of a murder and kidnapping, the novel, featuring a number of memorable characters and a formidable young woman investigator, doesn’t skirt over darker subject matter in its depiction of the secrets that underlie a seemingly sleepy small town.

When the novel opens, Moses LoBeau, a sixth grader, lives in the town of Tupelo Landing, North Carolina. Nicknamed Mo, she has been there ever since, as a toddler, she was found on the bank of a river during a hurricane eleven years earlier. This foundling story is one of the things that Mo considers “three times lucky” about herself: her biological mother tied her to a makeshift raft, sending her downriver to escape the hurricane’s wrath (just like baby Moses in the Old Testament); she was found by a kind man who had just had a car accident that caused him total amnesia near the spot where she was washed ashore; and Miss Lana, a loving woman took in both Mo and the Colonel and they have been a family ever since. Now, Mo helps Miss Lana and the Colonel run a café in the town. When she’s not doing that, she hangs out with her best friend, Dale, or she sends letters down the river in hopes of finding her birth mother (or her “Upstream Mother,” as she calls her).

The summer after sixth grade, Mo and Dale work in the café, help Dale’s older brother fix up a racing car, avoid Dale’s angry alcoholic father, and go fishing by sneaking out in the boat of the café’s most loyal patron, Mr. Jesse, a grumpy older man. Nothing is out of the ordinary until a stranger comes to town: Detective Starr, a police officer who starts asking uncomfortable questions about a murder in the nearby city of Winston-Salem. The townspeople take an immediate dislike to this intrusive man. The Colonel, in particular, is upset at his appearance.

All hell breaks loose when the cantankerous Mr. Jesse is found murdered in the boat that Dale and Mo have been “borrowing.” Suspicions run rampant, as everyone in Tupelo Landing tries to figure out which of their friends or neighbors could be a murderer. Dale and the Colonel become suspects as Detective Starr connects this murder to one that happened eleven years earlier; Dale because of his association with the boat, and the Colonel because of his antipathy to Detective Starr. Knowing that Dale is innocent, and worried about what could happen to her adopted father, the Colonel, Mo springs into action. She and Dale unite as the Desperado Detective Agency and start looking for clues.

However, no sooner have the two amateur detectives begun, then the town is under threat from an approaching hurricane. On top of that, Mo discovers something even more shocking: Miss Lana and the Colonel have been kidnapped for ransom. Mo receives a troubling phone call from someone named Slate, who demands $300,000 to release her parents. Immediately afterward, she receives good news: a phone call from the Colonel, who has escaped from Slate and is trying to figure out a way to save Miss Lana.

Mo and Dale make their way to Mo’s house and find a mysterious envelope stuffed with decade-old newspaper clippings that reveal that before he lost his memory, the Colonel had been a very high profile lawyer investigating a large theft to prosecute the culprit: the creepy Robert Slate. As Mo is piecing this together, Slate enters the house and the kids creep to the living room to escape. Unfortunately, they run into Detective Starr’s deputy, Marla. She isn’t there to help them though – she is working with Slate, who is trying to exact vengeance on the Colonel for ruining his scheme eleven years earlier and putting him in prison. Marla brandishes her gun at Mo and Dale, but they get the drop on her, tie her up, and escape.

The hurricane gathers force, but Mo thinks she knows where Miss Lana is being held: in the old windmill. There, they find evidence of the kidnappers, but Miss Lana has already been moved somewhere else. Not knowing what to do, Mo and Dale head back to Dale’s house. There, they find Dale’s father, Mr. Macon, in a drunken and raving state. Enraged, Mr. Macon hits Dale’s mother and screams that Dale is a coward, terrifying his family until Dale threatens him with a shotgun. Just at that moment, the Colonel bursts through the door. Defeated, Mr. Macon confesses that he has been helping Slate and that Miss Lana is now at Mr. Jesse’s house.

Together with the Colonel, Mo and Dale make their way to Mr. Jesse’s house, where they proceed to trap Slate for just long enough for Detective Starr to show up, free Miss Lana, and arrest Slate. Then everyone is free to put the entire story together. Eleven years ago, Robert Slate robbed a bank but was caught and put in jail by the Colonel. During that time, the Colonel’s secretary was murdered (that’s the eleven-year-old murder that Detective Starr is investigating), while he and his girlfriend fled to a small town to hide out. When he got into a car accident, lost his memory, and found baby Mo, his girlfriend – Miss Lana – pretended not to know him and to have just met him to keep them all safe under their new identities as café owners. Slate escaped from prison and found what he thought was a perfect victim: Mr. Jesse, a rich and solitary man. When Mr. Jesse wouldn’t give Slate any of his money, Slate killed him – and then found that Mr. Jesse’s fortune was willed to the Colonel and Miss Lana. Recognizing the Colonel as the lawyer who had put him away earlier, Slate hatched the kidnapping scheme to get at Mr. Jesse’s $300,000 and simultaneously get back at the Colonel.

The novel ends with Mo reflecting on the warmth and happiness she has found with her adoptive family. Even if she never finds her upstream mother, she will be loved.