While civil war looms in Oz Brrr—the Cowardly Lion—surrenders the story of his life to a tetchy oracle named Yackle. Abandoned as a cub Brrrs path from infancy in the Great Gillikan Forest is no Yellow Brick Road. Seeking to redress an early mistake he trudges through a swamp of ghosts becomes implicated in a massacre of trolls falls in love with a forbidding Cat princess and avoids a jail sentence by agreeing to serve as a lackey to the war-mongering Emperor of Oz. A portrait of a would-be survivor and a panoramic glimpse of a world gone shrill with war fever Gregory Maguires A Lion Among Men is written with the sympathy and power that have made his books contemporary classics.