FOREST OF FORTUNE

The lives of three people on the edge collide at a haunted California casino.

The winding road leading through a mesa on the Yukemaya Indian reservation to the Thunderclap Casino invites its victims to come make a killing. But all Alice wants is to make a living as a slot technician. While she’s working on the Loot Caboose, one of the most popular games at the Thunderclap, she smells sulfur. The next thing she knows, she’s lying on the floor of the Forest of Fortune with the raucous sound of the attract sequences in her ears. When she watches the security tapes later, she sees not only that she had a seizure, but that a ghostly woman floated near the machine and then climbed into it. For new employee Pemberton, Thunderclap is a chance to win back his fiancee, whom he lost—along with his last job and his license—because of his fondness for alcohol and cocaine. Although writing cheesy promotional copy for the casino is hardly the acme of his career, he hopes Thunderclap will save him. Lupita’s vocation is playing the slots in steady wins with hot streaks that she can’t predict. She also comes to the run-down casino when she’s lonely instead of spending time with her family. But her need for the drama of gambling, Alice’s choice of a roommate and unwillingness to accept the medical basis of her continuing visions, and Pemberton’s boozing and snorting away his chances for a happy life bring all three steadily closer to destruction. Even at the soul-sucking Thunderclap, however, hope has a chance over cynicism, greed and commercialism. Perhaps the spirit of Ramona, the stern-faced woman who looks down from a portrait in Pemberton’s rented cabin, is also watching over the struggling souls at the Thunderclap. 

Ruland (Big Lonesome, 2005, etc.) combines dark humor with a thorough understanding of human frailty in this offbeat gothic gambling tale.