"Luck chronicles the seething tensions that culminate in disaster one sweltering summer in a small, tobacco farming community in North Carolina. Mike Olive returns to his home town with a group of fellow Duke students to investigate the use, and abuse, of Mexican migrant workers on tobacco farms. Determined to rid his town of corruption and bigotry, Mike makes the migrant workers his crusade.

Conflicts with his father and neighbors mount as he accuses farmers of rumored crimes, and he falls in love with Hermalinda, the beautiful and self-possessed daughter of one of his father's workers. Mike's "townie" rival, the wickedly charming Harvey Dickerson, deftly challenges Mike's naive and nearly evangelical convictions. Long-standing family rivalries and loyalties rupture into brutal violence that changes the town forever.".

"From Hermalinda's rich and turbulent life on the Texas-Mexico border to Harvey's silver-tongued philosophizing and Mike's well-intentioned efforts gone wrong, the complex community of this troubled southern town is vividly realized."--BOOK JACKET.