The Lion Trees

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 for 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.

The Lion Trees has been honored by ten internationally accredited book award festivals: The Eric Hoffer Book Award, The First Horizon Award, The Beverly Hills International Book Award, The London Book Festival, The Southern California Book Festival, The Hollywood Book Festival, The Great Midwest Book Festival, the Amsterdam Book Festival, The Pacific Rim Book Festival, The Great Southeast Book Festival.

“A sweeping literary saga in the tradition of Dr. Zhivago, Gone with the Wind, and The Thorn Birds, this book 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.”—The Eric Hoffer Book Award

“[5 STARS]… Owen Thomas’ Lion Trees… can be anointed any number of superlatives to showcase its brilliance; highly addictive, spectacular, and mind blowing will have to suffice. Thomas is a wizard of fiction, and his novel a captivating gem that engulfs the reader from the beginning.”—US Review of Books

“[A] cerebral page turner…a powerful and promising debut.”—Kirkus Reviews

“[4 Stars]… In its structure and nature, [The Lion Trees] reminds me above all of John Updike’s wonderful Harry Rabbit novels and their ability to summarize the essence of change in American society across a decade at a time.” – BookIdeas.com

“[5 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.

“[5 STARS]… “Every now and then, seemingly out of nowhere, a new voice comes along and knocks your socks off. Owen Thomas owns that voice. . . . . Intoxicated by his prose, you gorge upon chunks of passages and while awestruck by the language’s majesty two discordant thoughts course through your brain: why is the book so long and then, superseding that sentiment, please don’t let it end. It is not often that a book like The Lion Trees graces our lives.”—The Anchorage Press

“[5 STARS]… I’ve been an avid reader for well over thirty-five years. I’ve been a reviewer for over a dozen. I’ve been bombarded by today’s cookie cutter story assembly and I despise it. There are times when I just don’t think I can take another pre-fab book. Then, someone like Owen Thomas comes along and reminds me what the book world CAN offer, what a story CAN be. It reminds me of the reason I fell in love with reading in the first place and what a magical world the art of storytelling is…. If I were going to write a book myself, I would want it to be something that changed the world of the person holding it, and this book does that exceedingly well”—LiteraryLitter.com