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The Lion Trees

By: Owen Thomas
Narrated by: Elizabeth Austin, Robert Ashker Kraft
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Publisher's summary

Winner of the Kindle Book Award and the Eric Hoffer Book Award!

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 40 years, risks everything for a second chance at who she might have been. David, their eldest, thrashes to stay afloat as his teaching career capsizes in a storm of accusations over a missing student and the legacy of Christopher Columbus. While Tilly, the black sheep, trades her literary promise for an improbable career as a starlet, and then struggles to define herself amidst a humiliating scandal and the judgment of an uncompromising writer.

By turns comical, suspenseful, 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.

Owen Thomas' rollicking debut novel is the winner of 14 international book awards, including: the 2015 Amazon Kindle Book Award for Literary Fiction, the 2015 Global eBook Award for New Adult Fiction, a 2015 Eric Hoffer Book Award, the 2015 'Book of The Year' for BooksAndAuthor.com, Finalist for the 2015 First Horizon Book Award, and placements at the London Book Festival, the New York Book Festival, the Amsterdam Book Festival, and the Beverly Hills International Book Awards.

©2014 Owen Thomas (P)2021 Owen Thomas
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Critic reviews

"Highly addictive, spectacular, and mind blowing.... Thomas is a wizard of fiction." (U.S. Review of Books)

"A sweeping literary saga in the traditional Dr. Zhivago, Gone with the Wind, and The Thorn Birds, this book has it all...original and stirring...." (The Eric Hoffer Book Award)

"[A] cerebral page turner...a powerful and promising debut." (Kirkus Reviews)

What listeners say about The Lion Trees

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WOW I

A book as great as this appears but once in a generation. Listen! Enjoy!

I have not read or listened to another book with this level of character development. And I have read and listened to a lot of books in my relatively long life. With one exception, all of the characters suffer from and at times revel in their flaws. I would love to take a graduate psych course on this one book.

The plot is not overly complicated (something I abhor) but the multiple twists and turns near the end are put together with great skill.

Owen Thomas must not rest on these laurels. Write, Owen, write. Take your time -- outdo yourself. I will wait. Perhaps not patiently, but I will wait.

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Gruesomely tedious

I just coudn't do it. The excruciatingly slow pace of the narration combined with the extreme navel-gazing story was just too much for me to take.

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