Content Warning: This section contains references to miscarriage, assault, and violence.

“Someone had left a baby outside the nunnery.”

This is the first line of the Prologue and the first time that Lucky appears in the novel. The sentence has a matter-of-fact tone, suggesting that unusual events will be the norm in this text about scamming.

“Luciana Armstrong stood in the bathroom of a gas station in Idaho, close to the Nevada border.”

This is the first sentence of Chapter 1, moments before Luciana, aka Lucky, buys her winning lottery ticket. The setting of the “Nevada border” alludes to the Western genre, foreshadowing the fact that the text will follow Lucky’s adventurous quest to evade the law and end in a gold rush.

“As little as she knew about religion, she worried that she and her father were definitely bad. They lied, they stole, they snuck around.”

Lucky touching her gold crucifix necklace causes her to think about morality. It symbolizes faith and her quest to find her mother. Her worries characterize her as an independent thinker whose agency is inhibited by her father.