The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley: A Novel

I’ve never read a story quite like this before. Hawley, a life long criminal and his daughter, Loo, have an unconventional, but loving relationship. We learn about Hawley's earlier life through chapters about the many bullet holes in him. He can’t emotionally get past the death of his wife, maintaining a shrine of all the physical memories of her and blames himself for her death. Loo has an atypical childhood with her secretive father who teaches her some of the skills of his trade while yearning for information about her mother who died when Loo was just a baby.

The story is well written and the characters are three dimensional. It’s one of those books that’s hard to put down and leaves you wanting more when the story ends.

Hannah is a good writer and story teller. This book is kinda like The World According To Garp, but with an overly simplistic structure. The ending isn't just awful, it just "isn't." The main characters all have character, but with limited (mostly none) visuality. I was dying to know what they looked like ... it was hard to get more than male/female, big/middling/short, white/non-white.

Told from the standpoints of both a teen girl and her outlaw but loving father. We see his total devotion to her, despite his frequent absences from her life. No mysticism or magic involved, just pure love and devotion.

When your life to date has consisted of never planting roots, making friends, or holding on to possessions the one rule you learn to adapt is never care you will lose it. For Loo and her father Samuel Hawley life on the road has come to a halt but not with a light drop, more of a huge bomb. Hawley has decided to return Loo to the town where her deceased mother came from hoping to assimilate some normalcy into the chaos he has so far made her live with. Returning home is not as complicated as it should be and school is not fun and games but a run for survival, something Loo was trained to know and understand. Hawley makes friends by keeping his enemies close and carves out as close to a family life for them as he can. Hawley runs a business and Loo deals with school, her grandmother, and the potential for one boy to see her as a whole person not the demonic child she has been labels by association.

But the scars on Hawley’s body tell the story of the illicit times he had, the running existence he sustained himself with, and the tale of how each bullet wound came to be lodged in his body. Loo always accepted what happened to Hawley as facts of his life but of late she is beginning to consider that the way they moved around and the way they functioned was not only not normal it was not right on any level.

The past has a way of coming back to haunt you and the ghosts of sins past never disappear they are just over looked until they once again rear their head and you must decide to deal or die.

This is a mesmerizing read of how the past always conflicts with the present and the decisions you make affect everything.

An intriguing title character that protects his daughter, yet continues his criminal activities makes “The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley” an interesting novel. Each of Samuel Hawley’s twelve lives is detailed through a focus on the bullet wound associated with that wound’s background story and his survival. Interwoven between those narratives highlighting Hawley are scenarios, set during different periods of her life, involving his daughter Loo. While she recognizes her father’s criminal activity, she loves him and follows him as they pack rapidly and leave locations frequently.

Hannah Tinti is a fine writer; portions of “The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley” dealing with Hawley were interesting and held my attention. However, interjecting Loo’s story into Hawley’s was distracting and minimized his personality and motivation. During the sections of the novel dealing with Loo, I felt as if I was reading a typical coming-of-age YA book. With respect to Hawley, Principal Gunderson, and Mary Titus, characterization was strong and the individuals interesting as the reader wanted them to have larger roles in the novel. Loo and Marshall never developed fully as individuals, but seemed to be extensions of their parents. While I enjoyed this book, it was not one that I felt compelled to read non-stop.

UGH this book. why all the great reviews?? The reviews and the summary plot are so misleading. The book started out good and seemed to back up the reviews. An unconventional father raising his daughter alone and through his love for her finding redemption from his past as he seeks a better life for her. I was drawn in and looked forward to a sweet, touching story about their relationship. Then about half way through, it all goes down hill as we delve more into his past. There's no redemption. There's no overcoming his bad past. He is still in it and teaching his daughter how to survive the same life. I felt like his choices were so selfish and awful. There wasn't any growth or change, just hiding and pretending. I was so mad at the book by the time I finished and felt like reading it was a waste of time.

This is an interesting book and quite honestly, I’m kind of at a loss on how best to write this review without giving too much away yet at the same time trying to do justice to the book. There are so many things to talk about with this book, so many angles to explore, so many points to discuss, it’s actually a bit overwhelming.

From the get go, when we as readers are introduced to the main character Samuel Hawley, we already know that he is a tough guy with a dark past – a past that possibly involved some amount of violence given the number of guns and ammunition he owned. Not long into the story, we find out that Hawley didn’t just have a violent past, he actually had a criminal one that involved robbery, assault, and even murder. Basically, he was a “bad guy,” a seemingly hardened criminal constantly on the run from his checkered past – and he had the scars to prove it: the twelve bullet wounds all over his body. After his beloved wife dies in a tragic drowning accident, leaving behind an infant daughter, Hawley finally decides to step away from his previous life of crime to raise his daughter Loo and make it his life’s mission to protect her at all costs. Eventually, Hawley’s past catches up with him and his daughter in their present lives and together, they must face an uncertain future amidst a past that threatens to destroy them.

This is the kind of book that cannot be placed “nicely” into any one genre or category because there is so much going on in the book all at the same time. There were times when this book felt like a mystery thriller, where I found myself right alongside Loo growing curious about her mother’s mysterious death and trying to put the pieces together with each clue that is dropped as the story progresses. Other times, it felt like a coming-of-age story centered around Loo as she grows into her teenage years and struggles to come to terms with her father’s past and the ominous influence it has on her present life. The chapters that detailed Hawley’s past exploits and the significance of the various bullet wounds on his body read like a suspense novel, with the intensity building up as each detail of Hawley’s situation is revealed. The gun battles and brawls and constant references to alcohol and bars as well as the idea of a menacing tough guy who is inherently good doing battle with those who are truly evil all remind me of those cowboy westerns I used to watch as a kid, except this one was in a modern setting. There was also the family drama element with the various relationship lines interwoven throughout the book: father-daughter (Hawley and Loo), husband-wife (Hawley and his wife Lily prior to her death), mother-daughter (Lily with her mother Mabel Ridge and also briefly with her own daughter Loo), grandmother-granddaughter (Loo’s tensed relationship with her grandmother Mabel Ridge), etc. And of course, there was the romance element in Loo’s relationship with her classmate Marshall.

In terms of structure, this is where the book is unique in that it essentially uses the scars on Hawley’s body as a “blueprint” for the entire story. As the narrative cuts back and forth between past and present, we are taken from Loo’s current life back to her father’s past, with every other chapter telling the “history” of each of the twelve bullets that had once gone through Hawley’s body. There was also quite a bit of symbolism interspersed throughout the story, especially in the chapters dealing with Hawley’s past, as well as metaphors about love, death, the significance of time, etc. I also picked up on a few subtle parallels with Hawley’s story to Greek and Roman mythology, which I felt was very clever of the author to weave into the story in such an unassuming way. As for the writing, I appreciated how descriptive the author was and the compelling way that the story was told. With that said though, the prose did feel a bit clunky at times and some sentences I had to read twice because the flow seemed a little off, but since this was an ARC and I understood I was reading an uncorrected proof that would probably undergo some more editing prior to publication, this was not too big of a deal for me.

As I said earlier, it is hard for me to do justice to this story through a short review. I would recommend reading the book and experiencing it for yourself. The only caution I would give is that there is quite a bit of violence in the book as well as some gritty depictions of criminal acts that some readers may find offensive. Personally, I struggled with some parts and actually disagreed with some of the characters’ actions, attitudes, and handling of certain situations, but overall, the story was good and I found myself still being drawn to the characters, despite their many flaws.

Received advance reader's copy from Random House via NetGalley.

Hannah Tinti merges two genres, coming of age and crime thriller, into a powerful tale of a daughter learning about her often absent outlaw father, then bonding with him, accepting him for the imperfect man he is, and discovering her own inner strength. Though filled with violence and plenty of death dealing, it ultimately finishes on a hopeful note, and stands as a testament to the goodness and love within even the most ruthless people.

The novel alternates between Loo, the daughter, growing up from age twelve to just shy of eighteen and the nomadic life of her father, an outlaw who freelances in crime. You have Loo and Hawley living together, learning about each other and Hawley’s criminal life centered around how he came to acquire eleven gunshot wounds. How he received these and curiosity about how he will get his last, the twelfth, plus how Loo will react when she discovers what Hawley really is, provide the propulsive drive of the novel.

Hawley has been a criminal nearly from the time he was a teen. He hooked up with Jove, an older man who claimed to be a doctor. Maybe he was, because he teaches Hawley quite a bit about field treating injuries, especially gunshot wounds. Hawley travels with a well stocked medical kit. Bad guys, after all, can’t just present themselves in emergency rooms. He and Jove see each other when they are working on a job for a kingpin named King. King deals in rare artifacts, which Hawley and Jove retrieve for him. When contractors steal from him, King dispatches Hawley and Jove to collect and mete out the criminal version of justice.

King’s a man who lurks in the shadows. Hawley meets him for the first time in a diner, where he also mets Lily, a memorable pairing. Eventually, he marries Lily. They have a baby, Louise, nicknamed Loo. Something terrible happens to Lily, reported back in her hometown as a drowning. This leaves Hawley with Loo. Hawley, though, has business to take care off, so he leaves Loo with Lily’s mom, Mabel Ridge, an eccentric and crusty character, in the coastal New England fishing town Lily grew up in. Hawley returns after four years and takes Loo back. With her, they traverse the country, dodging whatever Hawley believes wants to find them.

Finally, when Loo is older, they settle in the New England town. When she turns twelve, the start of the novel, he teaches her how to shoot. Let’s just say her upbringing bears not the remotest resemblance to that of Anne of Green Gables. She’s odd girl out at school, terrifically strong-willed, constantly rebellious, and sometimes given to violence. Marshall, a student in her school, develops a crush on her. When he kisses her, she responds by breaking his finger. He’s odd, too, and slowly they fit together.

Time passes and we readers she her relationship with Hawley change and deepen. We learn more about her mother, Lily, whom in spirit she bears a striking resemble to. And we feel a certain amount of tension, because it is quite clear Hawley lives an edgy life, waiting for something to happen, waiting for somebody to catch up with him. Then Jove reappears, surprising Hawley and Loo. And then we slid into a climax that calls on all the knowledge Loo has acquired, the astronomy she knows, what she’s learned about the ocean, and, of course, her shooting skills. The ending proves very cinematic.

While the novel contains copious amounts of crime and violence and the ending brings these together in the ultimate test of father-daughter bonding, it’s at its heart a story of girl growing and discovering herself and a father learning again how to love, this time his daughter. Tinti’s writing and mastery of criminal life, weapons, the outdoors, the sea, the sky, and human motivation will impress you, and are another reason to read the novel.

Rating: 4/5 stars
Genre: Thriller/General Fiction

"Their hearts were all cycling through the same madness—the discovery, the bliss, the loss, the despair—like planets taking turns in orbit around the sun. Each containing their own unique gravity. Their own force of attractions. Drawing near and holding fast to whatever entered their own atmosphere . . . they would find love and lose love and recover from love and love again."

This was a thoroughly enjoyable book, containing all the essentials for a strong 4 star rating: lyrical writing, well-developed characters, and an engaging plot. The book's plot structure was unique too. The story jumps back and forth between the present with Samuel Hawley and his teen daughter, Loo, to the past with explanations of how Samuel—previously engaged in criminal activity—received his twelve bullet wounds.

What fascinated me about this book was getting into the head of someone who had broken the law and his fight for a relatively normal life and his family. What's it like to run from the law, to always be looking over your shoulder? This book gave me a taste of that. But this book is much more. It explores what happens when a criminal finds love, through a woman who walks into his life one day and their child, Loo. How far will one man go to protect those he loves and to secure a safe, happy life for them?

Overall, it was a really fun and beautiful read, showing the power of love and family despite hardships and past demons trying to squelch it.

Usually, the first page of text is a clear indicator of a superior talent--or not. The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is a splendid book from the get-go! There's not a predictable moment or character. The author has taken two people who, in any other novel, would be in some manner clichéd, and made them unique and genuinely lovable. Father Samuel is a true victim of circumstances; he has an innocence of the heart that makes the reader care for and about him. And his daughter Loo doesn't follow the path of so many heroines, evolving into a vanilla pudding. This is a girl who is truly the product of her environment(s), her father's child in significant ways. I love this novel because of the way it challenges our perception of what and who is an acceptable person; I love it because of the way it has taken up a place in my thoughts and continues to linger there. This is a book so very worthy of our time and attention. I'm off now to order author Tinti's previous novel, The Good Thief.
MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

This novel has gotten a ton of pre-publication hype and two fellow bloggers whose tastes I usually agree with loved it (Novel Visits, It’s Tara Leigh). It was also marketed as a coming of age novel / thriller, which sounded right up my alley. Unfortunately, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley was just okay for me and I’m having trouble understanding all the hype.

The story alternates between Loo and Samuel navigating life in Olympus (the “coming of age” portion of the story) and chapters explaining each one of Samuel’s twelve bullet scars (the “thriller” portion of the story), with the two threads converging towards the end. I enjoyed the coming of age aspect (Loo/Samuel sections) of this structure, but after multiple “thriller” chapters (i.e. the bullet sections), I started to get bored with all the violence. With an exception or two, these chapters seemed senseless and the stories began to run together in my head. By the 75% mark, I began skimming just to find out how things would end.

Check out my blog, Sarah's Book Shelves, for more reviews.

This novel manages to be both cinematic and structural. While those aren't quite opposite approaches to writing, they're at least opposed on several fronts. Cinematic implies a visually and dramatically immersive narrative. Structural implies a deliberate attention paid to organization, an inorganic arrangement of scenes and settings. The title character and his daughter, Loo, move back to Loo's mother's hometown after years on the road. Through alternating chapters of flashback into Samuel Hawley's life, we learn that their frequent moves had to do with his criminal past, and the looming threats from enemies he's made along the way. The parallels between flashback and present are handled deftly, Tinti never forcing false connections. She uses the parallels to create new perspectives on her three main themes: "time, death, and love" (quoted from Tinti's interview with Karen Russell at the end of the book). She reveals that the past and the present are not separate entities, and in the end, the paired timelines converge. Tinti navigates this conjoined timeline to perfection, and the result is a novel that is familial and thrilling at the same time.

Cats have 9 lives, but Samuel Hawley has been blessed with 12! “The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley” by Hannah Tinti is the story of Samuel Hawley, his daughter Loo, and the people who interact with them throughout their lives. It is the tale of a lawless father and his attempts to keep those he loves safe. Sometimes he is successful… sometimes he is not.

Hawley and Loo move around a lot to random destinations. They only stay somewhere six months to a year. On Loo’s eleventh birthday, Samuel decides to take Loo someplace where she “won’t have to play alone”. This time, though, they return to Olympus, Massachusetts; her mother’s hometown. Loo’s grandmother still lives there.

We soon find out that Hawley has trouble reigning in his temper. We get a feel for why they may have spent Loo’s life running.

Samuel always had one gun on him and several more within arm’s length. He taught Loo how to shoot at twelve so it seems normal for her to be around guns. They are her friends. She is comfortable with them; she is not so comfortable with her anger. Mixed with her teenage hormones, she often reacts badly confronted by bullies.

I love the way the author switches from the present and Loo’s perspective to the past. Chapters alternate with “Bullet Number One” and so on to tell Hawley’s past, why he is running, and why he loves and protects his daughter so desperately!

As the book progresses, so does Loo’s life. For the most part, she is a loner. However, she finds love. Her attempts to maintain that relationship are frantic and pitiful. She is as strong a lover as her father. He sets up a sort of altar (in the bathroom) to her dead mother everywhere they call home. The explanation of this towards the end of the book is absolutely heartbreaking. It will rip open a wound in everyone who has lost someone they desperately love with the hope that they will look up and see their loved one turn the corner.

Super read; satisfying ending!

Release/Publication Date: March 28, 2017

Genre: Literary Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Coming of Age,

Cover: OK.

Source: I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review. Thank you!

Rating: 4.5 stars (rounding to 5)

The story opens with Samuel Hawley teaching his twelve-year-old daughter Loo how to shoot a rifle. While she knew not to touch, guns were part of the backdrop of her life, hidden all over the house and cleaned nightly at the kitchen table. Her father never left the house without one, and he was always "listening for something else ... always watching. Always waiting." So it probably shouldn't surprise the reader to learn that those twelve lives referred to in the title parallel twelve bullet scars that Samuel carries.

For as long as she can remember, Loo (short for Louise) and her father have rarely stayed in one place longer than a few months. They've crisscrossed the country in his truck, settling down in hotels long enough for her to attend school, often picking up and moving on before the year is over. They live on ramen noodles and take-out Chinese, play card games at night. At each stop Loo unpacks her few belongings while Samuel sets up a shrine in the bathroom to her dead mother's memory: a bottle of shampoo and conditioner on the edge of the bathtub; a lipstick and compact; a parking ticket, shopping list, and scribbled notes propped on the mirror. The "dead woman" we learn, "was an ever-present part of their lives."

Samuel and Loo finally come to settle in Olympus, Massachusetts, her mother Lily's hometown. A house in the woods, ocean fishing, grandmother nearby--it sounds almost idyllic after twelve years of gypsy living. But that grandmother won't acknowledge Loo, and the girl is often in trouble at school. Samuel is shunned by the small town and at odds with more established fishermen. Alternating chapters between Loo's present and Samuel's past, writer Hannah Tinti uses the bullet scars to tell Samuel's back-story. And it's not a pretty one.

Since he was barely sixteen, Samuel has made his way in the world by stealing and killing. The loving father and grieving widower is a criminal on the run. (I tried to figure out a way to slant that fact--some way to tell the truth a little more gently--but there it is.) Samuel Hawley has delivered stolen goods and been a hit man. He's a runner for mob types and has good reason for all those guns. It seems that criminals keep score.

Now I've never shot a gun, and I can hardly think of a situation in which I'd shoot one. I don't like violent movies--even those that get critical acclaim. I'm a law-abiding school teacher. (How's that for status quo?!) But I was riveted by The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley. Tinti created a character I loved, whose actions I despised ... but maybe came to understand.

And as luck would have it, yesterday's Weekend Edition on NPR featured an interview with the author that might also pique your bookish interest. Published this week, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is an engaging read.
[Read more at thisismysymphony.net]

Samuel Hawley is a mysterious man. His daughter, Loo tries to uncover this hidden life of her father. As she pieces together bits and pieces of their lives, we learn about Hawley's past by looking at the scars on his body, scars caused by the bullets that pierced him. I liked how Hawley's story is revealed as Loo grows up. You'd think that she will become just like her father, but the ending reveals that sometimes you, the reader, can be very wrong.

Although it is clearly said that Samuel Hawley was shot, you are still kept in a tense state because you don't know how he got shot. Every new bullet is a surprise, both because it lets you learn more about him, but also because you most certainly don't see it coming.

My favourite parts were those where Lily, his wife was present. She is a well-constructed character, and she seems to be the one holding Hawley in one piece. Loo, too, is a good character, and though she is a developing one, you can tell she has complexity and can be a stand-alone protagonist. She is my favourite character, with her quirks and shortcomings, her attempts to get by and add another day to her life. My least favourite character is Marshall. He is not good enough for Loo.

I read in the interview with the author, interview you can read at the end of the book, that the structure of the book was well thought - each Bullet Part had the same recurring elements: the bullet, the woman, the watch to point to love, time, death. I didn't think of this as I was reading the book, but you sense the tension created by these three elements. I find this very smart and so very good!

I strongly recommend this book to those who like suspense, but without the detective and police drama, mystery and alternating perspectives, as the book shifts from present to past to tell the story of each bullet. With each new bullet story you can't help but wonder where the new bullet will take you, since each shooting took place in a different part of the country. It was a good read, indeed! I look forward to reading more from this author.

I received a free e-book copy of this book from the publisher via Net Galley. All thoughts expressed here are my own.

Wow. I LOVED this book. Focusing on the flawed central character of Samuel Hawley, an enigmatic man peppered with scars, whose world revolves around his daughter and who earns a living through mostly nefarious means, as they move from motel to motel around America.
Determined to give his teenage daughter a more normal upbringing, he returns to his deceased wife's hometown and tries to set down roots and transform into an upstanding member of the community, however his old life keeps coming back to haunt him
Meanwhile, his daughter Loo, decides to dig into her family history, learning more about her mother, and with it the history of the scars that mark her father's body - each of them the result of a bullet taken during his criminal career.
An incredibly beautifully written story, combining the grit of the murky underworld that Samuel inhabits, with the purity of his love for his precious daughter and late wife, with truly wonderful results. This is one of those books that you never want to end. One of those books that has you staying up way too late as the dramatic denouement starts to reveal itself, as you won't be able to sleep without knowing what happens to the characters that you've grown to love. One of those books that shows the inherent good in people that society has turned its back on. One of those books that you'll be buying multiple copies of and giving to your friends saying "you need to read this, it's SO good".

Samuel Hawley and his daughter, Loo, have had an unconventional life. Hawley has had a criminal lifestyle since he was young and he and Loo have a nomadic existence after Loo's mother dies, moving often to stay away from criminal elements in Hawley's past.

He finally decides it's time to settle down and give Loo some roots so they move to Olympus, Massachusetts where Loo's mother was from and where her grandmother still lives.

This book was totally different than anything I expected. I loved the characters - even when I didn't (if that makes sense).

The technique the author used to tell the story, giving readers a peek back at events in Hawley's past was perfect.

This is a story of a damaged man, who loved his wife completely, and who does his best to raise his daughter in a way his wife would have wanted her raised. And it's about a daughter's love for her father even knowing he's not a perfect man.

I don't know if this review makes sense to anyone but me. It is one of the harder ones I have reviewed. But just know I enjoyed it immensely and recommend it highly.

I received this book from The Dial Press/ Random House through Net Galley in exchange for my unbiased review.

I loved Tinti’s first novel, The Good Thief (2008) –it had strong, engaging characters, the action zipped along and grabbed the attention, and she wrote like a dream: crisp, strong prose and when she described something --a setting, a character—she hit on just the right details, no waste, no fuss. And no pretension. Here, nine years later, is her second novel and it’s just as good as the first, with much the same virtues. Again, it’s a novel of character –a young woman’s growth and maturing, the tight bond of single parent and sole child—wrapped inside a fast moving adventure story.

Loo’s the child –never knew her mother and now she’s come to believe her father may have killed her. Hawley’s the father, and his body is marked all over with bullet holes –by the end of the book, twelve of them. They move a lot: he’s obviously running from something. He always carries a gun with him and there are more, lots more, in their house. And he teaches her, but not the ordinary things: how to hot wire a car, where are good places to hide cash and where not, how to shoot a gun. The story is told in roughly chronological sequence but with flashbacks to explain backstory to the present one. Interspersed with the story of Loo and Samuel are twelve chapters, each narrating where Hawley got one of his twelve bullet wounds. The book ends with violence but also understanding, reconciliation. This is a very good book but also, one that you will find hard to put down once you pick it up.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley opens with Samuel Hawley teaching his 12-year-old daughter, Loo, how to shoot a gun. This small chapter tells us so much about the characters and the secrets that Tinti will reveal about their lives.

​First of all, Samuel taught Loo’s mother, Lily, how to shoot guns. This is our first mention of Lily, who has been dead since Loo was an infant and who is the subject of a “traveling shrine that her [Loo’s] father re-created in the bathroom of each place they lived.” She’s held up on a pedestal to Loo and used as an example of behavior that Loo should always strive to emulate. “When Loo did something well, her father said: Just like your mother, and when she did something bad, her father said: Your mother would never approve.”

Second, this is our first mention of guns, which come to be a fairly substantial part of the book. We’re told from the opening chapter that Hawley has lots of guns which he travels with, and he “was always watching. Always waiting.”

Samuel and Loo stop travelling the country to move to Olympus, Massachusetts, where Lily was from. Tinti intersperses their present life in Massachusetts with tales from the Hawley family’s past, including how Samuel got the many bullet holes which riddle his body and how Lily died. This is really where we learn some of their secrets, and how Samuel and Loo learn that the person that someone is now isn’t always the person they were before or the person they’ll be later.

When the moment of reckoning comes for the Hawley family, when Hawley’s past comes knocking, Tinti beautifully and powerfully delivers an ending that brings this glorious epic to a close.

The plot that I’ve provided here just doesn’t do this book justice. There are many scenes in the book which are action-heavy, but most of all I loved Tinti’s characterization and gorgeous language. Tinti is an excellent writer who weaves words and sentences together into rapturous prose.

Take this sentence about a whale: “The creature rolled sideways, a rotating school bus, and lifted its pectoral fin high in the air and then spun it easily and dove, showing the full running slick of its long back, until there was only the fluke rising, the tail’s ragged edge flecked with white, bending and scraping the surface of the heavens and then plunging deep into the earth.”

If you read this book, you’ll love it.

**I received my complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley, but all opinions expressed here are my own.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti follows a father and daughter on the run from coast to coast. The mystery behind what they're running from and why is sure to keep the reader engaged until the last page.

There were two aspects of this book that really captivated me. First was the presentation of the sections or chapters. The father, Samuel Hawley, endures twelve bullets, or Herculean Labors, and each is a chapter that tells a little bit more about the characters from Samuel's point of view. In between these trials are chapters told from the point of view of Loo, Samuel's daughter, progressing the story in the present. The author's use of this POV shift really worked for me. It's a different way to tell a story and I appreciated that.

This book could be classified as many things. For me, it is a story about love enduring the journey of life. Not just romantic love, as you will read, but also the love between a father and daughter that, speaking from experience, is a difficult thing to put into words. The actions of these characters manifest it beautifully.

I think this is a must-read for the dad readers out there. If you're looking for elements of mystery and crime, that exists in this book as well. However, I don't feel that is the soul of this book which opens it up to fans of literary fiction in general.

I received a copy of this through the Goodreads Giveaway program. This will be the first book I've read by Ms. Tinti.

Since I read this during a road trip, and found myself stopping at the end of each chapter and rereading, the words and the characters permeated the trip and I have a visual image of each place I was when one of Samuel's lives was lived. I cannot say another book has ever had as great an impact as this one has.

I can honestly say this book was unique, not just in the format in which it was written, but in the characters inhabited within the pages. When you have a chapter entitled 'Everything That's Happened and Is Happening and is Going to Happen' you know the entire book will be amazing. And it is.

Everyone who has the delightful experience of experiencing Samuel, Loo and Mabel will definitely take away impressions of lives lived differently than their own. Many will be glad they're far away from the madness.

This is a difficult book to classify. There are plenty of killings, but it’s not a murder mystery. There isn’t a single cop or detective working on any of them, at least reported in the story. The title refers to the many shooting incidents in which the title character, Sam Hawley, takes a bullet. Sandwiched between these episodes of violent gunplay, most of them in the distant past, are chapters of Hawley’s current life with his teenage daughter Loo. Those chapters form a rather standard coming of age story.

I can’t say I liked the story all that much, but it wasn’t as repellent as the level of violence would suggest. The characters were interesting; credible – not so much. I’ve seen many caper movies or similar escapist fare where you are to root for the criminal. I have no problem with that when the crooks are ripping off the bigger crooks (e.g. The Sting). I don’t have that feeling with the real scumbags (e.g. Bonnie and Clyde). I think Tinti was trying to hit that spot where the protagonist is likeable enough that we cheer him on. Unfortunately, she missed it, at least for me. Bear in mind I’m retired FBI and do not like criminals. Hawley is a rather despicable character, even though he loves his daughter and makes an effort to leave “the life.” I found myself rooting for him to survive his many criminal escapades solely for Loo’s sake, but the nature of the format is such that you know he will at least until the very end, so there is no suspense.

I can’t help but feel that the excessive violence was just a form of pandering to the baser readership instincts that drive book sales. I never developed an empathy for the characters. This resulted in a reading experience much like reading a series of police incident reports. Just the facts, ma’am. It was just good enough to keep me reading to the end, although I came close to putting it down and not picking it up again several times. Some long waits in the doctor’s office helped keep me on track with it.

A different and interesting book. The 12 lives refers to the bullet scars that Samuel Hawley has on his body and the book tells you how Samuel received those scars. Samuel and his friend, Jove, used to be what they called themselves "takers". That's what they did. They would get paid to take. It was something they did for many years starting when they were very young until one day Samuel met Lily. He still took some, but not as much. Then when Lily got pregnant with Loo, Samuel could see that his taking days were over.

The books goes back and forth between the scar stories and life with Lily and Loo. It's a great story and one that I really liked a lot. A family story with a lot of emotion, sadness, loneliness, death, bad guys, moving (literally) and just a really, really great story. I was really sad when the book ended. I had become attached to these characters and did not want to say goodbye.

Huge thanks to Random House for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

I usually start a review with a little information of the book's plot or topic, but in this case the store's description sums it up perfectly:

"After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts. There, in his late wife’s hometown, Hawley finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school and grows curious about her mother’s mysterious death. Haunting them both are twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past—a past that eventually spills over into his daughter’s present, until together they 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 explores what it means to be a hero, and the cost we pay to protect the people we love most."

Yes, it is all that - and beautifully done. The two main characters are wonderfully drawn, and the alternating chapters, describing first their life in Olympus and then Hawley's past and how he got the bullet wounds, work perfectly to keep up the tension and fill in details, building to a climactic last chapter that pulls it all together. Tinti is going right onto my "Favorite Authors" list.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti is one of the 2017 releases that I was most looking forward to reading this year. When I got an email letting me know that I had won a copy from a Goodreads giveaway, I was so excited! And I am very happy to say that this book did not disappoint!
Full disclosure: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in a Goodreads giveaway. In no way does that affect my review.

Summary:
This story is about a teenage girl, named Loo, and her father, Samuel Hawley. These two have been moving from place to place for as long as Loo can remember. But now, Hawley wants to settle in Loo's mothers hometown to give Loo a shot at a "normal life." But after a couple run-ins with the locals, they're already off to a rocky start. Will they be able to stay in the town, or will Hawley's past come back to haunt him?

My Thoughts:
Right from page one of this book, I was hooked! However, I will say that I also found it to be bit slow moving and some bits seemed longwinded. But I was still totally captivated and needed to see what happened next.

The storyline was organized in a lovely way; the main storyline arc was focused on Loo and Hawley in the present, but the chapters were broken up by flashbacks where we got to learn more about Hawley and his past. Each of these flashbacks were focused on each of the bullets that Hawley had taken. Because of this organization, there was a bit of a mystery vibe to the story, which I really enjoyed.

The two main characters were very interesting, though it does take some time to really understand them. For example, with Hawley, he seemed super sketchy to me at first. But after reading a few of his flashbacks, I was able to understand why he acted the way he did. I also really enjoyed that we both got to see Loo grow up. Her struggle at being a "normal" kid was heartbreaking to me at first. But her character as a whole seemed so incredible. I loved how strong she was and how she always wanted to think for herself and not just take someone else's word.

Yes, there is violence in this story. But like I said above, once you find out more about Hawley's past, you'll understand why the violence is still present in their lives. I would also like to say that this story does not center on the violence; it centers on the love that the father has for his child and late wife, and the lengths that he will go to to protect his daughter.

My favorite passages:
It was a clear day. The leaves had abandoned their branches for the forest floor, a carpet of crimson, yellow and orange; crisp and rustling.

Each new place they travel to, she would wait until dark, spin the dial, set the right date and time, in the chart would reveal Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Taurus and Pegasus. Even if there were too many streetlights, and only the Big Dipper or Orion's Belt was visible, wherever they were would start to feel like home.

For a brief moment she was nothing but a person in a place and there was no past and there was no future, only the single moment where her life flashed open – and she was awake and she was alive and she was real.

My final thoughts:
I really enjoyed this book and I would definitely recommend giving it a read! I gave my edition four stars, but I would love to re-read it once the finalized copy is released to see if the latest edits bumped this to a five star read.

I loved this book. Hannah Tinti,has so artfully constructed a beautiful coming of age novel threaded with an almost classic quest story punctuated by bouts of terrific violence. Samuel Hawley has spent his life running from his past, a past that has marked his body with puckered scars from a variety of guns. He does his best to shield his teenage daughter Loo from any of this, including the events surrounding her mothers death. But the past has a way of encroaching on the present, and soon Hawley's former lives and his present collide in a startling confrontation. Tinti is a incredibly visual writer, and each bullet Hawley takes is its own amazing,tense,and unforgettable cinematic like chapter. More than once I found myself holding my breath through their bloody conclusions. It's a fantastic story between a father and his daughter, a husband and his wife and and the lengths we go to protect the ones we love.

It is appropriate that Hannah Tinti grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, because this novel is a feat of sorcery which cast its spell on me with its compelling emotional clamour, hypnotizing me, binding me to its terribly flawed characters in ways and for reasons I am still trying to parse, and after having finished it in twenty-four hours during which I resented to the point of anger any interruption to my reading, it continues to haunt me.

Here from the Penguin Random House site is a synopsis:

Samuel Hawley isn’t like the other fathers in Olympus, Massachusetts. A loner who spent years living on the run, he raised his beloved 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.

Growing more and more curious about the mother she never knew, Loo begins to investigate. 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.

Truth: I checked it out from the library because Ann Patchett blurbed it and she is one of the blurbers whose blurbing integrity I trust. She did not mislead me on this one when she said, “Hannah Tinti proves herself to be an old-fashioned storyteller of the highest order.”

And what a story. But equally riveting as are the tales of each of Hawley’s scars, is the artistry in the way Hannah Tinti shapes the story. She connects the past and the present with precision of language and detail and stunning command of metaphor.

Every section is beautiful, and each builds on those preceding, soaring to new heights, in the same messy and terrifying way life happens. Hanah Tinti’s greatest feat — for this reader — is the way she makes vital and urgent recklessness and chaos of these characters’ lives while using such accomplished literary technique; and, making literary fiction as pressingly turn-the-page exciting as a potboiler.

The Bullet #5 chapter is heartbreaking and stunning. By the time it’s over your heart will have been four times broken for four different characters; two younger ones confronted with the doomed doppelgängers of their potential future selves. To read the line, “She said to stop stealing cars, and doing other bad stuff. Otherwise I’d end up like you.” and feel its weight, its surprise, its perfection, its heft of emotion and hard, hard, nearly impossibly and unbelievably hard truth is to know you are in the hands of a great writer.

There are many varieties of love — father/daughter, spouse/spouse, mother/daughter, teen first crush to teen first crush, love of danger, love of nature, love of friends, love of holding on to hate — explored and limned with careful and meticulous particularity in prose that holds one hostage, gun to the head, forcing you to keep reading, keep reading, keep reading.

Fantastic, five-star novel. I’m no Ann Patchett (or Richard Russo, Meg Wolitzer, and Ruth Ozeki, all of whom blurbed it as well) but you can trust me not to lead you wrong on this; READ IT NOW!

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti
Publisher: The Dial Press
Release Date: March 28, 2017
Length: 400 pages

Single Sentence Summary: Samuel Hawley’s teenage daughter, Loo, is just beginning to put together the pieces about her father’s dark history – his very dark history.

Primary Characters: Samuel Hawley – Samuel has been a lot of things in his life: a desperate teenager, a common thief, a killer, a loving husband, a father, a protector. Loo Hawley – A brilliant girl, teenage Loo finds herself settled for the first time and it’s in the town where her mother grew up. Questions inevitably follow.

Synopsis: For as long as she can remember Loo and her father have led a life on the move. Their homes? Motels. Their stays? Weeks to months. Her schooling? Sporadic. Their traveling companions? Guns, rifles, a licorice jar stuffed with money, and a bear skin rug. As Loo reaches her teens, Samuel wants to give her a more normal life, so settles them both in Olympus, Massachusetts where Loo’s mother grew up. Such a huge life change brings with it questions: questions about her mother, questions about their life on the run, and most of all questions about Samuel, for he is the biggest unknown in Loo’s life.

Review: The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, Hannah Tinti’s new book, is definitely one of my favorites this year. She did a masterful job of combining a coming-of-age story with a dark mystery. The chapters alternated between Samuel’s past and the life Loo and Samuel shared in Olympus. Samuel’s life unfolded through the bullet wounds on his body. Each scar revealed a little more about the man that he was and the life of crime he’d chosen for himself. The other chapters focused more on Loo and her reactions to being the new girl in her mother’s hometown. But, the more Loo learned the more questions she had about Samuel and his dark past.

It’s easy to love a book when you love the characters and I was crazy about both Samuel and Loo in The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley. Taking an objective look at Samuel Hawley, there really is far more to dislike than to like. He was a criminal and a killer. The choices he’d made spilled over into the lives of the people he loved most, his wife, Lily, and his daughter, Louise. Somehow, Tanti managed to give this man redeeming qualities so that I couldn’t help but care about Samuel. He was a man in pain who, above all else, loved and wanted to protect his daughter.

“Hawley told her it was her mother’s hometown…..A normal life, Hawley said. With a real house and a neighborhood and friends her own age and a school where she could find a place to belong.”

Loo captivated me even more than Samuel. This was a girl who’d led a life on the run, and the transition to “normal” was not an easy one for Loo. She was different than most kids and making friends was not a skill she’d ever learned. Loo had holes in her life, the biggest being her mother. She’d only known Lily through Samuel and the small shrine he built to her in the bathroom everywhere they had lived. As a teen walking the same streets her mother had, Loo’s appetite for details about Lily could not be quenched, and Samuel couldn’t give her more. When she looked to others for answers, Loo began to see her father with fresh eyes. What she saw slowly eroded their bond.

“Loo watched him shoulder the rifle and understood, in a flickering moment, that her father was exactly that – a professional. All the guns in their house. All the scars on his body. All the ways that he was careful. It was because of this.”

Hannah Tanti’s writing was truly magnificent. She didn’t judge her characters, but treated them with empathy. She gave reasons for Sam’s actions without excusing them. In Loo she created a character that elicited both sympathy and hope. I’m predicting that The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley will be high on my list of top books for 2017! Grade: A

Disclosure: There are the store Associate links included within this post.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is a strange and beautiful novel that defies classification. It’s rich in symbolism and mythology, situated as it is in Olympus. Olympus, Massachusetts, that is. But if you ignore all the embellishments, the watches, the whales, the obvious mythological references, it is essentially a story of a father and daughter and how their love is tried, tested, and true.

It’s easy to get entangled in the clever motifs that repeat themselves. The whale sighting near the beginning of the book as Hawley and Jove (Yes! Jove!) are escaping after being Jove is burned and Hawley is shot, the whale’s heart at the museum, the Whale’s Jaw in the center of Dogtown’s woods, and the whale that breeches near the end when Hawley is shot yet again and Loo is steering the boat toward hoped-for rescue. There are the clocks that are all over the place, the burglary where they realize that if the clocks are chiming, someone is winding them. The clepsydra, an ancient water clock, the wristwatch they he and Jove take from Talbot early in the book that Loo forces King to toss into the ocean near the end of the book. Tempus fugit! Whales are fraught with symbolism, life, death, and obsession. And clocks, the symbolism is obvious.

There are two story threads, the contemporary life of Loo and her father Samuel Hawley in Olympus, the town where her mother grew up. They are misfits in the town, both quick to resort to violence. Loo’s grandmother is still alive but does not welcome either of them. The other narrative tells of the twelve bullets (The Twelve Labors!) that Samuel Hawley has taken, often out on a job. He’s a criminal, one who is often the middleman in some antiquities and collectibles illegal trade and importation, delivering the payment to pick up the item for example. Like the Hercules of myth, he’s not the brightest bulb on the string, but he’s strong and has grit.

I liked The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley more than I probably should. I think the careful insertion of whales, watches and mythological references is heavy-handed. I think Tinti even got tired of the Twelve Labors motif, knocking out bullets 7, 8, and 9 in one chapter. I think that contrast between the brutal and obtuse Hawley of the bullets and the loving, mostly wise father of the contemporary narrative is a bridge too far to cross. He shot himself in the foot, for Pete’s sake. These inconsistencies are a weakness. We also have to suspend a couple Aegean stables full of disbelief to believe he has never been caught considering all the times he has been shot and the mayhem left behind. So, yes, the book has its problems, but I still loved so much about it.

Mostly I love Loo. She is smart, curious, and loving. She is capable and hard-working. She is a fascinating character whose uncertainty is hidden by bravado. She loves her father and even when Mabel tries to convince her that her father killed her mother, even when she learns the truth about her father, about his criminal past, she still loves him. She knows him.

Early in the book, Hawley meets a woman who loves a man unworthy of her. She says, “Love isn’t about keeping promises. It’s about knowing someone better than anyone else. I’m the only one who knows him. I’m the only one who will.” Love is the center of this story. Hawley’s love for Loo and for Lily his wife. Loo’s love for Marshall, her first boyfriend. The Lily’s maternal love for Loo and even Mabel’s love for her daughter and granddaughter, crabbed though it might be by loss and resentment. There is a lot of love in this book, underneath all the gunfire.

I was provided an advance e-galley by the publisher through NetGalley.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti is one of the 2017 releases that I was most looking forward to reading this year. When I got an email letting me know that I had won a copy from a Goodreads giveaway, I was so excited! And I am very happy to say that this book did not disappoint!
Full disclosure: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in a Goodreads giveaway. In no way does that affect my review.

Summary:
This story is about a teenage girl, named Loo, and her father, Samuel Hawley. These two have been moving from place to place for as long as Loo can remember. But now, Hawley wants to settle in Loo's mothers hometown to give Loo a shot at a "normal life." But after a couple run-ins with the locals, they're already off to a rocky start. Will they be able to stay in the town, or will Hawley's past come back to haunt him?

My Thoughts:
Right from page one of this book, I was hooked! However, I will say that I also found it to be bit slow moving and some bits seemed longwinded. But I was still totally captivated and needed to see what happened next.

The storyline was organized in a lovely way; the main storyline arc was focused on Loo and Hawley in the present, but the chapters were broken up by flashbacks where we got to learn more about Hawley and his past. Each of these flashbacks were focused on each of the bullets that Hawley had taken. Because of this organization, there was a bit of a mystery vibe to the story, which I really enjoyed.

The two main characters were very interesting, though it does take some time to really understand them. For example, with Hawley, he seemed super sketchy to me at first. But after reading a few of his flashbacks, I was able to understand why he acted the way he did. I also really enjoyed that we both got to see Loo grow up. Her struggle at being a "normal" kid was heartbreaking to me at first. But her character as a whole seemed so incredible. I loved how strong she was and how she always wanted to think for herself and not just take someone else's word.

Yes, there is violence in this story. But like I said above, once you find out more about Hawley's past, you'll understand why the violence is still present in their lives. I would also like to say that this story does not center on the violence; it centers on the love that the father has for his child and late wife, and the lengths that he will go to to protect his daughter.

My favorite passages:
It was a clear day. The leaves had abandoned their branches for the forest floor, a carpet of crimson, yellow and orange; crisp and rustling.

Each new place they travel to, she would wait until dark, spin the dial, set the right date and time, in the chart would reveal Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Taurus and Pegasus. Even if there were too many streetlights, and only the Big Dipper or Orion's Belt was visible, wherever they were would start to feel like home.

For a brief moment she was nothing but a person in a place and there was no past and there was no future, only the single moment where her life flashed open – and she was awake and she was alive and she was real.

My final thoughts:
I really enjoyed this book and I would definitely recommend giving it a read! I gave my edition four stars, but I would love to re-read it once the finalized copy is released to see if the latest edits bumped this to a five star read.

'The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley' by Hannah Tinti and it's a good one. Alternating between a father and daughter and his rough past, I found it to be a good balance of love and violence.

Samuel Hawley and his daughter Loo have been on the run for most of her life, living in hotels and being ready to flee at a moment's notice. Now they are settling down in a small town in Massachusetts. Loo is a teenager who is curious about her past, and this town holds some of the answers. Her father has a body full of wounds, and in twelve stories, we learn where some of the damage came from.

There is a tenderness and love to the father and daughter, but the father is all business and willing to shoot first. The problems of his past trouble him and hang over the story. Loo is a capable young woman who trusts her father, but is beginning to have questions.

I really enjoyed reading this. The prose is beautiful in places. I also loved how Hawley's story has taken him all over the United States. He's not a good guy, but he's not unsympathetic, which is a tough balance. I look forward to seeing what this author writes next.

I received a review copy of this ebook from The Dial Press, Random House Publishing Group, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

Twelve Lives is, at its core, a novel filled with suspense but, fear not, there's also a mystery for all of us die hard mystery lovers. To start, we meet Samuel, father to Loo and husband of Lily who died many years earlier. Her death had been ruled accidental but as I got further into the story, I began to wonder whether that was true. There are many reasons this question entered my mind, the biggest being Samuel's past. Through chapters alternating between past and present we get to know Samuel, starting around age 20 when he chooses to start down a path of criminality which leads to his first "bullet," that is, the first of TWELVE times he's shot. The chapters follow his life through places like Wyoming, Alaska, The Midwest, and the desert, to the coast of Massachusetts where he and Loo eventually decide to stay and make a home.

These "bullet" chapters alternate with present day ones in which we get to know Loo, Hawley, Mabel (Lily's mom) and many more of the unique characters living in the coastal fishing community. I'm going to be honest, some of the "bullet" chapters became a little monotonous and I found myself rushing to get through them to return back to the present which were my favorite parts of the book. I LOVED reading about Loo and being privy to all of her firsts...1st time shooting guns, 1st love, 1st time driving (illegally of course)...as well as her relationship with Hawley who seemed to hold her at arm's length just a little too much as his fierce desire to protect her from his past was always at the forefront of his mind- it really occupied his thoughts and drove everything he did. I could really understand this because in his (criminal) past he left behind dead bodies, bridges burned, and many enemies made...he knew that one day it would all catch up with him. That's what I meant by suspense and the author built it brilliantly!

The more I write, the more I'm thinking this is actually a harder book to review than I initially thought because there's SO much I could talk about but in the interest of keeping this fairly short, I'll just point out a few final reasons I really loved this book:

Pace - The author has crafted such a well-paced novel that I quickly became immersed in the story from beginning to end
Multidimensional, Flawed Characters - I'm not exactly sure how she created such vivid, nuanced characters, possibly it was her use of exquisitely fine tuned language, but the people in this story were REAL and alive to me
Themes - I loved how she examined the fluidity of time...wishing it could be turned back in Hawley's case but also exploring how he and Loo both discover it actually marches on no matter how much they wished to change or stop it
ManySetting - Loved it!! Small town coastal fishing community...I could picture it perfectly
If you like small town coming-of-age literary novels filled with mystery and suspense, I think you'll really enjoy this read!

This. Book. This book is everything. It is harsh and mean and shivering cold. It is also warm and loving and sweet as sugar and as tense-making as any book I've read in a long, long time.
The story begins with Hawley teaching his adolescent child how to shoot straight.
Hawley is a bad man. He has done horrible things. When he had a wife and child and was part of a family he tried to change, to let go of the scheming cruelty of the next big deal, the next big pay off, but they have too much power over him and cannot be washed from his blood, not even by the enormous power of his love for Lily and Loo. He is always on the run from people who want him to suffer, to see him dead for the things he has done to them, taken from them. His wife dies under mysterious circumstance and he is forced to leave his baby daughter, Loo, with his wife's mother Mabel Ridge. He keeps coming back for her because he doesn't like or trust Mabel and there is a space in his heart only Loo and his memories of his wife, Lily, can fill. He creates a shrine to his dead wife in every bathroom in every place he stays. Grocery receipts, a tube of lipstick, faded pictures, useless mementos.
Unfortunately, things never work out exactly the way he hopes and he keeps taking his child back to his mother-in-law. As his daughter grows older she begins to investigate. Who is Hawley, who was her mother? Who is she? As she gets closer to the truth her confusion multiplies exponentialy.
There are many surprises in this book. Telling you about them could spoil it for you. Tinti's novel is exquisitely written. Gorgeous words used to describe awful things. This is absolutely the best book I have read, so far, this year. Fast

Samuel Hawley has been on the run with his daughter Loo for years, packing up and relocating every year, never getting too settled, too comfortable. Loo doesn’t know why they have to live this way, but her mother is dead, her father is all she has, and she loves him. It really isn’t that bad. She doesn’t remember it being any other way.
Then one day, when Loo is 11, Hawley decides it’s a good time to settle down somewhere, and he takes Loo to her mother’s hometown of Olympus, Massachusetts to lay roots. As the years pass and Loo grows into a young woman, she learns more and more about her father’s past, including some painful truths she hadn’t expected, gets questions answered about her mother, of whom she knows very little, and starts to grasp the person that she is and the kind she wants to be.

The tone of this book reminded me a bit of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood crossed with a smattering of The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis. A little gritty, but not overwhelmingly so. Perhaps it’s the survival aspect that connects them, the idea that when our lives are at stake, all bets are off. Also, that doing bad things doesn’t necessarily make us innately bad, that we are still capable of loving and being loved, that there is always room for change, always room for forgiveness, to make amends, to do better and be better.
Hawley may not be the perfect father, but damn if he doesn’t try. Loo’s upbringing is far from typical, but somehow it suits her personality, she takes it in stride, and she loves her father fiercely. Love isn’t always easy, and love between parent and child is rarely simple, but despite all the extraneous crap that gets tossed at them, their bond remains intact.
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is about a lot of things – redemption, sacrifice, friendship, forgiveness, family – but ultimately, it’s about love. And it’s a love story worth reading.

Note: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley. I pride myself on writing fair and honest reviews.

Samuel Hawley has lived a very dangerous life as the twelve bullet holes in his body attest. He has spent most of his life on the run first with his friend, Jove, then with his wife’ Lily, and after her death, with their daughter, Loo. But, now as Loo enters adolescence, he has decided, for her sake, to give up his criminal ways and has moved them to a small fishing town, Olympus, where her late mother is from. It isn’t easy to get accepted but eventually they do as Samuel gets work in the fishing industry and Loo seeks to uncover what really happened to her mother while finding first love with the son of the town’s rather quirky environmentalist. But the pair will soon learn that it is not so easy to escape the past and it may very well destroy the relationship between them.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by author Hannah Tinti is a beautifully written book combining myth, metaphors, and genres to tell the story of familial bonds, how the past is never fully left behind, how it continues to influence the presence, and what we are willing to do to protect the people we love. Chapters alternate between Loo’s coming-of-age tale and Samuel’s story told around the origin of each bullet hole. But despite the fact that these two different narratives seem to head in opposite directions as Loo’s story moves forward and Samuel’s backwards, they work in tandem, Samuel’s past helping to explain Loo’s present. Characters throughout are well-drawn, complicated, with flaws that we can relate to. The story is a complex and compelling tale, at times humorous, poignant, heartbreaking, redemptive, but, most of all, it is a story about love. This was not an easy read but it is one of the few books I know that I will go back to again and again.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

This is a very interesting book. I couldn’t begin to guess what genre you would put this into or how to describe it. The writing is very well done and I could picture things perfectly. I could even smell the brine-y air of the sea and feel the loneliness and desperation of Hawley.
I didn’t connect with the characters in an I-can-understand-what-they-are-going-through way but I did like Loo and even Hawley. I knew something terrible must have happened to Sam in order for him to force himself and Loo to live their lives like they did. I feel very sorry for Loo having to live this restless life and not really knowing why and seeing how it affected her relationships or lack thereof.
I am not sure how I feel about the ending and since I don’t like spoilers…just FYI: if you like your endings neat and tidy and all wrapped up, you might not be happy.

Really enjoyed this book! I loved the structure. I've read many books similar to this, where the chapters alternate between past and present, but how the author implements this was completely unique and I absolutely loved it. The "past" chapters each hold the story of how one of the main characters (Sam Hawley, who goes by Hawley) received each of his twelve bullets. Brilliant!

Hawley was a relatively low grade criminal, until the death of his wife changed his life forever (btw this isn't spoiler-y - you know from the start that Loo's mom is dead and it's even in the book description). Throughout the book, you see the evolution of both Hawley as a dad and Loo as his daughter. Loo's story is told in present day, and is sort of a coming of age story. They both make mistakes and learn from them, and both the past and the present merge at the end of the book. I do have to note that I both loved and hated the ending. I loved the full circle, but I also thought the very end was a bit...vague. That's all I'll say on the topic. :)

Aside from the love/hate ending, I felt like some of the supporting characters in the book (the non-criminal-type) were a little too hard to believe. Maybe it's because those parts were told from Loo's perspective, but I struggled to relate to them. Perhaps it's been too long since I was Loo's age!

Please note I received a copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley.