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 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 16 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.

"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

Winner of 16 International Book Awards, including the Kindle Book Award, the Global eBook Award, The Eric Hoffer Book Award, the London Book Festival, and the New York Book Festival.