The Lion Trees Part One Unraveling Author:Owen Thomas What if survival required you to unlearn who you are? How far would you fall to save yourself? Sometimes happiness is a long way down. — — The Johns family is unraveling. Hollis, a retired Ohio banker, isolates himself in esoteric hobbies and a dangerous flirtation with a colleague's daughter. Susan, his wife of forty years, risks everything fo... more »r a second chance at who she might have become. David, their eldest, thrashes to stay afloat as his teaching career capsizes in a storm of accusations involving a missing student and the legacy of Christopher Columbus. And young Tilly, the black sheep, having traded literary promise for an improbable career as a Hollywood starlet, struggles to define herself amid salacious scandal, the demands of a powerful director, and the judgments of an uncompromising writer.
By turns comical and poignant, the Johns family is tumbling toward the discovery that sometimes you have to let go of your identity to find out who you are.
AWARDS
The Amazon Kindle Book Award (Finalist)The Eric Hoffer Award (Winner - Honorable Mention)First Horizon Award (Finalist)Beverly Hills International Book Awards (Finalist) London Book Festival (Honorable Mention)
Southern California Book Festival (Honorable Mention)
Great Midwest Book Festival (Honorable Mention) Los Angeles Book Festival (Honorable Mention) Great Southeast Book Festival (Honorable Mention) Pacific Rim Book Festival (Honorable Mention)
A cerebral page turner...a powerful and promising debut.--Kirkus Reviews
A sweeping literary saga in the tradition of Dr. Zhivago, Gone with the Wind, and The Thorn Birds, [The Lion Trees] has it all, including scandal, aspiration, treachery, and reinvention. Thomas' fiction has a fresh feel--original and stirring--delivering a tale of monumental family dysfunction, which captures interest through numerous plot shifts, quickly alternate between poignant and humorous. By turns exhilarating and exhausting, Thomas creates compelling, rich characters. The ending is just as satisfying as the beginning. At 2,000 pages, the scope of the project alone is admirable. -- The Eric Hoffer Book Awards [Five Stars]...[A] powerful, gripping and realistic story...The Lion Trees does what so very few great novels can: it will take a lot out of you, but leave you with much more than you had when you began --Pacific Book Reviews.« less