Evocative trip back to the 1960s. Leaves no stories untold about the 60s.. Crime, drugs, cults. You name it. A page turner with stories not to be forgotten.

THORN TREE
Max Ludington

This may at first seem like a character study, but it is, however, a love story. A story about a tree, a story about a man.

THORN TREE revolves around four people. Daniel, Celia, Dean, and Jack. Celia, who is the connecting piece, is Dean’s mother. Jack is her father and Daniel is a neighbor and friend.

Celia is an actress with a complicated history and her career is in a perilous state. She often leaves Dean with Jack when she is working. Sometimes for extended periods.

One of those times Dean makes it over to Daniel’s house and the two form a connection. It’s evident right away that Dean is not well looked after and that bothers Daniel. His story and his relationship with the THORN TREE explain why.


THORN TREE is about the differences between generations, not knowing what you don’t know until you do, and being forgiven for all that you don’t see yet. Permission to change your mind, to evolve, to move beyond, morph and transcend.

I love the duality of Ludington’s writing. There is a surface level to things and then there is an underlying understanding running underneath, just below the surface. It makes understanding characters’ motives and behavior even easier than a book already does.

This was my first experience with Ludington, and I was impressed.

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the advanced copy!

THORN TREE…⭐⭐⭐

This is a complex story with 3 main characters and many side characters. The novel also jumps between the 60’s and now.

Unfortunately between the dual timelines and different characters and settings, I had a really difficult time getting into this book.

The characters all seemed to talk alike in long, thoughtful paragraphs. Lots of deep thinking. Places and events are described in great, thoughtful detail, just like the characters talk. I spent a lot of time looking up words on the Kindle.

I can see how this novel would appeal to a lot of people. I think that I just didn’t have the focus and brain power to give it what it needed.

I have struggled with how to rate Thorn Tree. Overall I felt like it was an engaging read, but there was a lot going on, especially towards the end and the ending felt abrupt to me. That being said, there are some interesting vignettes about life in the film industry and most of the main characters are interesting and sympathetic.

(Thanks to @stmartinspress #gifted.) 𝗧𝗛𝗢𝗥𝗡 𝗧𝗥𝗘𝗘 by Max Ludington is the story of three neighbors living in the Hollywood hills. Daniel is a sort of one hit wonder artist, turned teacher, now retired. His backstory is complex and drives much of the story. Celia, a young actress and mother, is working on a film which could turn around a career that has been marked with scandal and stints in rehab. She lives in the much larger house adjacent to Daniel’s. His home was at one time the caretaker cottage for the property where she and her son Dean now live. Rounding out the story is Jack, Celia’s father and frequent caretaker of Dean. Jack has secrets that drive the story in unexpected ways.⁣
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This book had so many elements I like in a story. It used a dual timeline, with one being the present and the other starting in the late 60’s, then stair stepping forward. The earlier timeline especially worked for me because I love that era of free love, sex, drugs and rock & roll. Ludington used it in a way different from most which had me loving those parts of his story. The main characters were richly developed, while still leaving some mystery to be uncovered. There were those to root for and others to loathe. Woven throughout the story was a level of suspense and unease that was compelling.⁣
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Unfortunately, certain elements around some characters didn’t work as well for me. I’d have liked to know Celia better and for her to have had a more prominent role in the story. She seemed a little marginalized to me. On the flip side, I’d have liked a lot less of Jack. His story was important to the overall plot, but his parts just seemed to drag. I thought there was more backstory about him than needed. (Or, more than I needed!) Sadly, the large amount of space that his character occupied had a big impact on my enjoyment, making 𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘛𝘳𝘦𝘦 just so-so for me. ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

This was a great book until the end. The main characters were complex and well written. The tension and sense of something about to happen permeating the story was well done. The Sixties drug scene and back story of the two main characters, Daniel and Jack, was an excellent story, until it came time to bring it to the current time frame. Unfortunately, the story got unnecessarily complicated with extraneous characters, and I did not feel it all came together at the end but ended rather abruptly. Thank you NetGalley for providing the ARC.

"Thorn Tree" by Max Ludington is an exceptional work of literary fiction. The multilayered plot kept me completely engaged from the first page to the last and the characters were richly and fully developed. I was absolutely riveted and had a difficult time putting this novel down; it's the kind of book that makes me want to skip work and read straight through because, while reading, the real world ceases to exist. The author's words paint such a vivid picture that reading it felt like watching a movie in my mind. This is a finely crafted, cerebral novel and I highly recommend it to readers that enjoy "highbrow" literature. Fans of John Irving will definitely enjoy this book.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this dazzling book. Five stars!

There is a lot going on in this story and a lot of characters. I would consider Daniel the center character with the rest being related to him. The story starts in the 1960's when he falls in love with Rachel. On a trip to LA to make a drug deal for his boss they become acquainted with a cult that lives in the desert. On their way home Rachel and Daniel stop to rest and come down from an acid trip when Rachel wanders off and falls off a cliff. That's all I'm going to say.

I liked Daniel. He did some sketchy things but turned his life around and became a teacher and now still tutors underprivileged kids. Jack I despised from the start. Celia was trying to be a good mom to her son, Dean, but she had a crappy upbringing and was also in recovery. The chapters were long and there were some characters that were brought in like Gerald, Hunter and Chris, that just added to the muddle and didn't seem to move the story along. The author likes to use big words when a regular word would work better. Then there is the ending. It all came together pretty fast and I thought left a lot of things hanging and not in the read my next book to find out what happens next but more like the author was just done with it.

I would like to thank Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a digital copy.

I didn’t know what to expect when I started reading Thorn Tree. From the blurb, I was expecting some insight into 1960s drug culture, and well, I don’t know what I was expecting after that. So, I went into reading Thorn Tree with an open mind. I mainly felt neutral toward the book.

The main storyline of Thorn Tree focuses on Daniel, Jack, and Celia. The storylines were well-written but flat. I also had the same feeling with the secondary storylines. They were flat and didn’t add much to the main storyline. Also, in certain parts of the storyline, the storyline is almost fever-dream-like. I also was not a fan of how the author would switch from 2017 to the past without giving a heads-up. It made for a lot of backtracking, which I prefer to avoid.

Out of the four characters, Daniel was the most relatable. Yes, he had some pretty crappy things happen to him. And yes, Daniel did some pretty crappy things, too, but he had turned his life around. He became an educator who valued his students. He was trying to mend fences with his son and reconnect with his ex while helping out her seventeen-year-old son. He was just a good guy overall.

Jack, on the other hand, I detested. From the minute he was introduced in the book, I felt that he was off in a way. And, oh boy, was he. I felt dirty after reading his chapters as if I needed a shower. Like Daniel, he had some crappy things happen to him. But, he took the trauma of those things and let them control him. He did love Dean in his way, and I didn’t doubt that. But, the events in the second half of the book disgusted me.

I did like Celia, but I felt terrible for who she had as a father and what she was being forced to do on set. Unlike Jack, who tried to hide who he was, Celia knew precisely what type of person she was and what kind of person she wanted to be. I wasn’t a big fan of how her relationship with Leo started. But, the conversations that she and Leo had were thought-provoking and soul-searching. I also never doubted her feelings for Dean. She loved her son, and everything she endured on that set was to give him a good life.

I also liked Dean. However, as the book went on and Jack became more interested in his ex-cult (I will explain below), Dean became more damaged. He went from an outgoing, vibrant child to one who shut down to everyone except for Jack, Celia, and Daniel. Jack was sucking the childhood right out of him, and it was painful to watch.

The storyline with Daniel broke my heart. It was interesting to see Daniel evolve into the man he was in 2017. I liked that the author had him trying to rectify past mistakes and express regrets over things he did in the past (the blowing up of his tree, though, was not a regret of his). I was not expecting his storyline to end as it did, and I was a little grumpy about that.

The storyline with Jack was interesting, even though I didn’t like him. The author didn’t even pretend he was a good guy; I liked that he did that. I wish the author had spent more time on Jack’s time in the death cult. It would have explained why he was so fixated on it in 2017 and why he put his grandson through the events that he did.

The storyline with Celia and the one with Dean (up to almost the end of the book, where his storyline became the only one) were fascinating. But they didn’t hold my interest (it was more about Daniel and Jack). That is until the last half of the book. Then Dean’s storyline became very interesting. I am going to repeat what I said above; Jack was sucking away Dean’s childhood. It was so evident by the last chapter, which I can’t go into.

There was a secondary storyline that involved two teenagers (Chris and Hunter) and a pamphlet that contained the works of Jack’s long-dead cult leader. While I didn’t feel that it added any depth to the main or Jack’s storyline, I did find it fascinating to see how Chris got swept up in the whole cult idea. I also found it fascinating that Jack seemingly got swept up, too.

I liked that the author went a little in-depth into the counterculture of the late ’60s. I found those chapters fascinating and wished that the author had spent a little more time there.

The end of Thorn Tree was a bit bland. The author did bring everything together, but I wasn’t happy with any of the outcomes. Jack’s confession to Daniel, while needed, did not need to turn into what it did. Also, I wouldn’t say I liked how the whole Dean storyline ended. I was shaking my head in disbelief and dsiappointment.

Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press, NetGalley, and Max Ludington for allowing me to read and review this ARC of Thorn Tree. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

Characters who reached their peak achievements while young must now live the quiet days being the artist who....or the actress who...
They live their almost conventional lives on the edge of the celebrities who no longer recognize the 15 minutes of fame they had. A deep dive story into how these characters face the rest of their stories with the decline of their fame. Then Max Ludington mixes a complicated character into the everyday routine and builds tension throughout the rest of the story. Knowing they must leave the safety of the lives they have built in order to insure the safety of a young boy will take every ounce of courage they never knew they had.

Promoted as fiction, this book has more drama and thrills mixed in the story than you'd expect. I loved the characters interactions and how Luddington mixes the story slowly until you realize you're not quite sure how you got to the middle of the drama.

Thorn Tree by Max Ludington is a very evocative novel. We see an art piece, hate it, or like it or love it. But how much of the back story do we know about the artist or what compelled them to create that art?

Thorn Tree is two stories combined in one. Daniel, now a school teacher, was an artist first. Dean, a seven year old boy, lives with his mom, Celia, an actress and Jack, his grandfather. One day, Dean visits Daniel, who is his neighbor. The story then picks from there with the back story of Daniel in almost alternative stories.

The book almost begins in the 1960s, and there's a lot of drugs and cult like atmosphere throughout this book. It's not exactly mystery, but there's an element of mystery for sure. I am still contemplating what I think of this book. Definitely needs content warnings, though.

Thank you, St. Martin's Press @stmartinspress and Netgalley @netgalley for this book.

CW: Drug use, infidelity, child kidnapping, hostage, cult, prison

Being an LA resident I always like to see how writers present LA and it's environs. Thorn Tree is a novel that deals with Hollywood, cults, revenge and how a tragic incident in ones life can truly set you a path you never expected or planned to be on. The main characters are Daniel and Celia. Daniel is guy living in the Hollywood Hills and after an incident with his girlfriend decides to create a piece of art he call Thorn Tree. People come from near far to see it.

Celia is an actress and has a son named Dean. Jack her father watches the child and meets up with Daniel and from that points the story grips you and doesn't let up. You know soemthing is going to happen. The author then goes back and forth and shows what made Daniel the man he and discusses topics of peace and solitude. I don't want to say much more than that except says you see the world of cults and what attracts them to people.

While reading it reminded me of recent novels of the 60's and 70's. The author has a more literary spin on things though. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I want to tahnk Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the read. Would be a fun book club pick too!

Unfortunately I never quite got into this book. It felt forced throughout and I struggled deeply with feeling like the characters were real individuals. The dialogue felt offputting.

While I really dug the symbolism of the Thorn Tree and really hoped that all the intertwining characters would eventually pan out and connect they never quite did.

I ended up nearly DNFing but pushed through at the last minute. Fleshing out the characters more when we have to spend a lot of time with them would be good.

Thorn Tree by Max Ludington is a convoluted story of two men and their offspring and extended families. The timeline jumps around to tell the story in real time. The men are called Daniel and Jack. Daniel is a fabulous character who tried LSD once and it changed his life. Turns out he had a jar of it in his trunk and he went to prison. He had been with a girl who was found dead, but they couldn’t prove he killed it. When he got out of jail he was seriously depressed and walked into the desert, ready to die. He was found by an old guy named Ben, who brought him around and kept him for a while. Ben had a junk yard, now defunct, and Daniel helped him get the remaining stuff to town to sell. Then he began to eye what was left. From it he built a tree, a big tree. He gained a lot of recognition and so he built a couple more. Daniel was so unhappy about the commerciality of it all that he blew two of them up. He went to jail, again, terrorism. Now he was out and he was old. He lived in a cottage and led a peaceful life until a little boy named Dean entered it and brought with him his mother and his grandfather.

This is a beautifully written book, with plenty of well-written descriptions, as well as the lives of several people entwined in it. Took me back. The plot was interesting, reminiscent of the lives of many aging “hippies.” Drugs had been manifest, reaching for a new reality. It was fairly easy to convince a bunch of druggies that one could open their hearts and minds to a new reality. They would follow him anywhere. It was an intricate plot, totally character-driven and what wonderful characters they were, caricatures, maybe, but maybe real. It is a long book, but well worth the time and effort. Touching, heart-breaking, and so much more. Thanks, Max Ludington, for this effort.

I was invited to read Thorn Tree by St. Martin’s Press. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #StMartinsPress #MaxLudington #ThornTree

“Thorn Tree” by Max Ludington captures many wild elements of the sixties, with reverberations still echoing in its characters today. We have colorful acid trips, communes, cults, even the Grateful Dead are here– and set against this psychedelic backdrop we have the trauma of a young girl’s death.

In 2018 we find Daniel, a once-famous artist who never recovered from the trauma of his girlfriend, Rachel’s death and the prison time he served for his role in that. We are served up his back-story, filled in by numerous jumps back in time. Just out of prison, he stumbles onto a remote bunkhouse and barn in the Mojave Desert, where he throws himself into constructing a huge tree sculpture of metal, the Thorn Tree. Never intending for anyone to see this art, it expresses the devastation he feels for the night he lost Rachel. Eventually people flock to this piece, drawn by an unwelcome article in the L.A. Weekly. Notoriety arrives– peace does not.

Another major player in this book is Celia Dressler, a struggling actress who has been through rehab and is seeing her career back on the upswing. Often away filming on location, she lives just up the hill from Daniel and only takes an interest in him when she finds her six-year-old son, Dean, has been inviting himself over to this stranger’s house when not being supervised by her father.

Celia’s father, Jack, is the wildcard here. For some inexplicable reason he wants to be Daniel’s best buddy and his tormentor. While we are taken with the histories of both Daniel and Celia, the more we find out about Jack, the more repulsed we are.

Unfortunately, too many different characters are introduced, particularly toward the final portion of the book. A whole cult sub-plot expands and some of the major people drift away for too long. It is reminiscent of the part of a DVD where the director explains why certain scenes and performances were cut, just slowing things down or not being able to be fully realized within the confines of the plot.

The major characters were riveting. Daniel’s complicated story was intriguing. Celia’s romantic relationship with her driver brought out some honest conversations exposing intense emotions. Even the devil, Jack, uncovered a surprisingly tender side with the love of his grandson. There seemed to be too many loose ends, however, and I felt the book’s momentum was lost by the swollen final direction taken.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I think that this novel will have readers that put it on their “best of the year” list and others that find it was just not their kind of book. Sadly, I fell somewhere in that latter group. Ludington has a great story line spanning six decades. He depicts a LA lifestyle of sex, drugs, and music in the same timeframe that I was coming of age, so I felt invested in the story.
All his characters have some form of trauma in their lives. His main characters are developed to the point that the reader has empathy for them. I enjoyed the tragic story of Daniel, how he overcame his past, briefly became an art phenomenon, and now is a reclusive retiree. Celia also had fame in her youth as a Hollywood starlet, but now struggles to reclaim some of that recognition.
Ludington has enough people in this novel to populate a small town, many of them having no real reason to be included. My main objection to this book is that, in my opinion, it was overwritten and under-edited.
Ludington’s penchant for using obscure words became a major distraction to me. They paused the storyline: go back, re-read, cogitate, and resume. Quite annoying when used repeatedly.
My thanks to St. Martin’s Press, NetGalley and the author for an advanced copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

4 stars / This review will be posted on goodreads.com today.

I really enjoyed this book. It was very different, and I wondered how all the storylines and characters were going to intertwine. In the end the backstories in the flashbacks showed how these people all had histories that overlapped. It was very well done. Just a note, there is a lot about drug use and abuse, and some emotional/sexual abuse as well.

Daniel was a product of the sixties. Lived in California, smoked a bit of weed, kind of a carefree soul. Until tragedy hit his life and he found himself wandering through the desert where he came upon a salvage yard that became his home for a time. During this time he created an artistic masterpiece called Thorn Tree. He was known for it. Someone paid a very large sum of money for it. But after that Daniel became quite lost.

He met up with an old friend from the sixties, Cam, and moved into a guest house on Cam’s property in Beverly Hills. He cleaned up his act and became a teacher. When Cam passed, the house was purchased by a young actress, Celia, with a young son and her father. The son, Dean, became friends with Daniel, by wandering on over to Daniel’s house when his grandfather, Jack, is neglectful.

As these four lives become more interconnected, we see into the past of Jack’s and Daniel’s lives, and the circumstances that has brought them together.

Really great look into the culture and environment of the sixties in California. How it ultimately shaped so many lives, especially in cult-like groups and communes. How some people were able to move along with the times, and others firmly gripped in the mentality that existed at that time and have never changed. Great character studies for these people. Ludington has created a book that immerses you in their lives and what led them to today and how they are.

Not perfect, but a very enjoyable read that I would recommend.

Thorn Tree by Max Ludington was an extraordinary story.
Ludington builds the tension slowly in this novel. Hardly before the reader is aware, it turns into a page turner.
It is compelling. Brilliantly written and plotted, I enjoyed this one.

Thank You NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

Thorn Tree by Max Ludington is a puzzling novel, difficult to categorize.
On the one hand, it is partly a meandering tale of experiences in the counterculture of California during the 1960s and 70s, with scenes involving drug use and abuse, music, and commune life. But it is also a character study of a complicated man, Daniel, age 68, who has lived a lifetime of personal tragedy, love lost, brushes with the law, and prison time. He tends to self-isolate, and now, in 2017, is retired and living alone in a rented guest house in Beverly Hills. The residents of the main house are a famous beautiful young actress Celia, her 6 year old son Dean, and her irascible father Jack.
Told in two timelines—past 1968 onward—and present—2017—the story wanders through their lives, told in long chapters and a stream of consciousness writing style. There are many words and long-winded descriptions of places and events.
I found most of the characters to be unlikeable, as they are generally unscrupulous and self-serving. They wallow in introspection and retrospection, and it is hard to feel a connection or sympathy for them and their unfortunate or downright unpleasant life choices. I did like Dean, the young boy, who is amazingly unspoiled in spite of all the damaged adults in his life.
The plot is decent, but again is not well-served by the very long chapters and philosophical ramblings. I did guess the story’s twist early on, and I think the ending touching, and very much in keeping with the general tone of the story.
I really wanted to like this ARC, since I requested it in part because I lived the 60s and 70s in this milieu of experimentation and counterculture. But the lack of focus and rambling writing left me wanting tighter plotting and focused storytelling, and less hand-wringing by the main characters.
While this is a “miss” for me, I appreciate Ludington’s writing skill and imagination. I would definitely give his future novels consideration.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the ARC. This is my honest review.

A swirling novel of past and present centered around Daniel, a sculptor who has become reclusive as he ages. This moves back and forth between the 60s and 70s and the present, with trauma from the death of Daniel's girlfriend Rachel at its center. Does Daniel's new neighbor Jack- a scary raging man-really know what happened to Rachel? I struggled a bit with this at first but then found myself caught up in the story. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This won't be for everyone but it's an interesting read for fans of literary fiction,