Thorn Tree by Max Ludington

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Date of Publication: April 16th, 2024

Genre: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical

Purchase Links: Kindle | B&N | AbeBooks | WorldCat

Goodreads Synopsis:

“Terrifically vivid…Remarkable.” —The New York Times Book Review: A beautifully wrought novel on the aftershocks of the heady but dangerous late 1960s and the relationship between trauma and the creative impulse.

Now in his late-sixties, Daniel lives in quiet anonymity in a converted guest cottage in the Hollywood Hills. A legendary artist, he’s known for one seminal work—Thorn Tree—a hulking, welded, scrap metal sculpture that he built in the Mojave desert in the 1970s. The work emerged from tragedy, but building it kept Daniel alive and catapulted him to brief, reluctant fame in the art world.

Daniel is neighbors with Celia, a charismatic but fragile actress. She too experienced youthful fame, hers in a popular television series, but saw her life nearly collapse after a series of bad decisions. Now, a new movie with a notorious director might reignite her career.

A single mother, Celia leaves her young son Dean for weeks at a time with her father, Jack, who stays at her house while she’s on location. Jack and Daniel strike up a tentative friendship as Dean takes to visiting Daniel’s cottage–but something about Jack seems off. Discomfiting, strangely intimate, with flashes of anger balanced by an almost philosophical bent, Jack is not the harmless grandparent he pretends to be.

Weaving the idealism and the darkness of the late 1960s, the glossy surfaces of Los Angeles celebrity today, and thrumming with the sound of the Grateful Dead, the mania of Charles Manson and other cults, and the secrets that both Jack and Daniel have harbored for fifty years, Thorn Tree is an utterly-compelling novel.

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First Line

Dean was asleep on the carpet in Daniel’s bedroom, a yellow truck in his hand, when Daniel woke.

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Important details about Thorn Tree

Pace: Alternated between medium and fast

POV: 3rd person (Jack, Daniel, Celia, Dean)

Content/Trigger Guidance: Thorn Tree contains themes of bullying, sexism & misogyny, racism*, terrorism, statutory rape/assault*, abandonment, adoption, cheating, child abuse, divorce, emotional abuse, infidelity, addiction, alcoholism, anxiety & anxiety attacks, depression, dissociation & dissociative episodes, hallucinations*, sex addiction, substance addiction, alcohol consumption, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, drugging*, overdose, blood, head trauma, dead bodies, grief & loss depiction, death of a partner, captivity & confinement, cults, imprisonment & incarceration, kidnapping, murder & attempted murder, physical assault, stalking, animal attack*, attempted suicide *, suicide*, and homophobia. Please read carefully if any of these triggers you.

• Racism—Daniel’s girlfriend and her two sons are black. One of her sons, a former student of Daniel, refers to how two black kids in Beverly Hills would be treated (i.e., the cops called) if Daniel wasn’t at his house.
• Statutory Rape/Rape—Rachel, Jack’s ex, was possibly raped by Jack’s friend when he was holding her captive at his house. She was also fifteen when this happened and presumably had consensual sex with Jack, who was over eighteen at the time. At another point in the book, a woman accuses Jack of raping her when she was sixteen.
• Hallucinations—Daniel, Rachel, and Jack take LSD and have hallucinations due to that. Chris, towards the end of the book, suffers from hallucinations.
• Drugging—Jack remembers the leader of his cult drugging underage children.
• Animal Attack—Jack is attacked by a mother coyote while running from Daniel’s house.
• Attempted Suicide—Chris remembers Hunter attempting suicide when he sees the scars on her arms.
• Suicide—Jack walks into the aftermath of his father’s suicide. Chris commits suicide but there are no details given.

Language: Thorn Tree contains explicit swearing and language that might offend some people.

Sexual Content: There is moderate sexual content in Thorn Tree.

Setting: Thorn Tree is set in Los Angeles, California (1960s, 1970s, and 2017).

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My Review:

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.

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