Goodreads Blurb

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.

My Review: Rated 4 out of 5 stars

This book brings together violence and love in a way we could not imagine. Just imagine first aid kits being part of your everyday needs! This book could never have enough first aid kits. That kit was a building block for Hawley. Without it, he would not have survived his first shot. Hannah split this book into all twelve shots that Hawley lived through without a complaint while coming to the present and showing us the life he lived with his daughter. Hawley is a man that from a very early age, met a friend who got him into stealing and killing in order to survive. It’s a book in which he is a villain but has a soft spot for his wife and daughter. He did everything in hopes of making a better life for them. Loo is Hawley’s daughter, who is constantly bullied at school until she takes matters to her own hands. Violence is what she learned from her father, and that violence made them both survive in their environment. As much as he didn’t want Loo involved, she was from the very beginning. Once you start this book, you won’t be able to put it down. Each bullet was a scar that we were part of as we read this book. Enjoy the thrilling story.

Author Biography

Hannah Tinti grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, and is co-founder and executive edtior of One Story magazine. Her short story collection, ANIMAL CRACKERS, has sold in sixteen countries and was a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway award. Her first novel, THE GOOD THIEF, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and winner of the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Hannah’s most recent novel, THE TWELVE LIVES OF SAMUEL HAWLEY was a national bestseller and is in development for television with Netflix.