Publishers Weekly
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Ludington (Tiger In a Trance) delivers a vibrant narrative of art, love, and the lingering damage of 1960s excess. Daniel Tunison, a retired schoolteacher in Los Angeles, briefly became famous in the 1970s for his sculpture “Thorn Tree,” a massive scrap metal construction in the Mojave Desert. The nonlinear narrative delves into Daniel’s painful source of inspiration for the piece. At a 1969 Grateful Dead concert in San Francisco, his girlfriend, Rachel, runs into an ominous figure from her past, and she and Daniel flee the show. On the way back to L.A., they pull off the highway and find refuge under a tree, which, in their LSD-fueled haze, seems to exude mystical powers. The events that follow are murky, and the night ends with Rachel falling from a cliff to her death. Daniel then serves a brief prison sentence for trafficking LSD, and after he gets out, he builds the sculpture in homage to the tree under which he last saw Rachel. In the present, Daniel befriends his new neighbor Jack Dressler, who is prone to alcoholic rages and reveries of his time in a 1960s cult. One day, Jack menacingly implies to Daniel that he knows what happened to Rachel. From there, Ludington rachets up the suspense as Daniel and Jack’s encounters build to a reckoning and a dangerous showdown. Readers won’t want to put this down. (Apr.)

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Ludington’s lushly descriptive and assured second novel ranges from California’s late-1960s counterculture to the pre-Covid-19 near present. In 2017, two survivors of the ’60s, both veterans of prison stints, coexist uneasily in separate houses willed to them by a mutual friend on an estate in Beverly Hills. Pensive Daniel, 68, is best known for creating—and then blowing up—the elaborate art installation in the desert that gives the novel its title, though more recently, he has been working as a high school English teacher. Enigmatic, alcoholic Jack, 77, is supposed to be caring for his cherubic 6-year-old grandson, Dean, while Dean’s actress mother, Celia, “fresh out of rehab number two,” is off filming a movie, but Jack is so often distracted that the unsupervised Dean frequently wanders off to hang out with Daniel. As the novel fills in their backstories, it becomes clear that the lives of both men were shaped by visits to a Northern California commune, encounters with a cult leader, experiences with LSD, and a significant Grateful Dead concert, as well as by the death of a woman important to them both. The most affecting chapters deal with Daniel’s slow transformation and his recovery from tragedy through the creation of art, which is described in meticulous detail. But Ludington’s tendency to spend long stretches developing secondary characters—such as Daniel’s artist son or the multiple drug dealers Jack gets to know—only to drop them precipitously, slows the momentum of the novel, as does the grating reiteration of the sense of impending disaster experienced by nearly all the characters: Celia, for example, feels “a monolithic fear located behind her sternum” and “radioactive dread.” A rushed, violent, and confusing ending throws the otherwise meditative novel off-kilter, without resolving the many questions it raises. A meandering take on the repercussions of life in a fascinating era. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Ludington's (Tiger in a Trance, 2004) second novel unfurls the secrets of two men bound by knotted ties to one woman. Retired artist Daniel lives on a rocky oceanside estate bequeathed to him by a friend. He lives alone, intentionally removed from the fame he once gained. He's often visited by his neighbor, Dean, a perceptive preschooler who is regularly left unattended and hungry. Dean’s grandfather, Jack, visits too. Normally casual and friendly, Jack soon manifests an edge of familiarity and menace. Meanwhile, Celia, Dean’s mother, struggles with fears, relationships, and unsavory demands while working as an actress. Chapters switch up decades and California locations, including Haight-Ashbury and a desert commune. Reading like time capsules, pages are laced with scenes from a Grateful Dead concert, lyrics by The Doors, and descriptions of LSD experiences. The characters’ personal stories are marked by addiction, abuse, and mysticism, and organically pose questions about love, trauma, art, and reality. Readers interested in 1960s counterculture and the psychological elements of character development will find this novel engrossing and ultimately suspenseful.