After a decade in exile, an ex-convict finally returns to his family’s Washington state vineyard. But things are very different now: the land is under threat from foreign investors and hostile county commissioners. There’s even a rogue militia unit hiding out from January 6 charges, and this is all before the bears show up. Thomas, who took a five-year prison sentence to protect his brother and best friend from a cannabis trafficking bust, must now relocate the family’s legal weed farm to a remote off-grid mountaintop. In the meantime, he also navigates a tentative romance with a Kiwi midwife, his twin’s resentment, and a conspiracy involving gold smuggling and FBI stings.
As Thomas Lion’s OSPREY GOLD shifts between multiple perspectives as the suspense rises, readers get to see the conspiracy from all angles—even as Thomas’s prison history is revealed in piecemeal through flashbacks and exposition. Suggesting blood loyalty should transcend political differences, the novel uses the Parker family as a microcosm of post‑January 6 America. MAGA loyalties and Capitol‑riot guilt fracture a household but ultimately move them toward redemption, as Lion argues that family allegiance can overcome even the most toxic political fervor by acknowledging it and choosing accountability over denial.
While these characters are memorable, they can also be a bit much to keep track of (especially with the POV changes). Readers aren’t quite in any one character’s head for more than a few pages before moving on to someone else. Still, they’re an engaging ensemble. For instance, family patriarch Ken’s trembling hand reaches for wine precisely when the dinner conversation turns to Trump. Thomas’s twin George has a legal cannabis farming business that’s being regulated out of existence, causing him to break down in a barn and address rows of cannabis clones as if they were his children.
Using his roguish charm and self-deprecating humor, Thomas masks the hurt caused by betrayal and isolation. However, his internal monologues (particularly the four-page, edible‑induced spiral) follow the same anxious loop. While realistic, this becomes repetitive. He is also forced to confront his complicity in his family’s dysfunction, reflecting on how their “guerrilla grow” (their secretive, illegal cultivation of cannabis on land they did not own) endangered everyone and how his sacrifice created a decade of silent resentment.
The main antagonist, Maximous Romanov, doesn’t quite develop beyond the gold teeth and crushing handshake of his first appearance. Instead, his wife ends up as the far more compelling villain, even though she’s only given a fraction of the same attention. This creates a bit of an imbalance.
On the other hand, Lion molds the natural world into a living, breathing character. The mountain is transformed into a moral barometer, with its quartz cliffs nicknamed the “Fingers of the Dead” and its ancient pine full of ospreys and bears. As the ospreys delay their southward migration, the environmental sensibility proves resonant in a novel that ultimately overcomes its weaknesses.
Thomas Lion’s OSPREY GOLD intriguingly examines sacrifices made for others and whether they can be truly repaid.
~ Gabriella Harrison for IndieReader