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The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
March 28, 2017  /  400 pages  /  Fiction
The mesmerizing new novel from the prize-winning author of The Good Thief
 
Samuel Hawley isn’t like the other fathers in Olympus, Massachusetts. A loner who spent years living on the run, he raised his daughter Loo on the road, moving from motel to motel, always watching his back. Now that Loo’s a teenager, Hawley wants only to give her a normal life. In his late wife’s hometown, he finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at the local high school.
 
She also grows more and more curious about the death of the mother she never knew. Soon, everywhere she turns, she encounters the mysteries of her parents’ lives before she was born. This hidden past is made all the more real by the twelve scars her father carries on his body. Each scar is from a bullet Hawley took over the course of his criminal career. Each is a memory: of another place on the map, another thrilling close call, another moment of love lost and found. As Loo uncovers a history that’s darker than she could have known, the demons of her father’s past spill over into the present—and together both Hawley and Loo must face a reckoning yet to come.
 
This father-daughter epic weaves back and forth through time and across America, from Alaska to the Adirondacks. Both a coming-of-age novel and a literary thriller, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is an unforgettable story that explores what it means to be a hero—and the cost we pay to protect the people we love most.
 
Advance praise for The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
 
“The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is one part Quentin Tarantino, one part Scheherazade, and twelve parts wild innovation. Hannah Tinti proves herself to be an old-fashioned storyteller of the highest order.”—Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth
 
“Hannah Tinti’s The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is a riveting character-driven thriller, a father-daughter road trip you won’t soon forget. Fans of The Good Thief who have been waiting for whatever comes next from this gifted writer will find their patience richly rewarded.”—Richard Russo, author of Everybody’s Fool
 
“The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is utterly magnificent—gripping, suspenseful, funny, and so full of heart. Young Loo and her father are contemporary characters with the stature and magnetism of the great heroes of literature. The reader in me was racing through to find out what would befall them, while the writer, awestruck by Hannah Tinti’s powerful storytelling, was desperately trying to slow down. This is a book I will return to again and again, for sheer pleasure and to learn how it is done.”—Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being
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