Search results for ""Author Willy Vlautin""

Severely wounded in the Iraq war, Leroy has lived a half-life in a group home for eight years. Unable to bear it any longer, he commits a desperate act which helps him to disappear to another place. Freddie is the night porter at the home, who works two jobs yet can't make ends meet. Buried in debt from his younger daughter's medical bills, he's forced to consider a criminal proposition. Pauline is the nurse who tends Leroy, who lives her life in an uncomplicated way, emotionally removed, until she meets a young runaway. An extraordinary portrait of contemporary America, and a testament to the resilience of the human heart, The Free is Willy Vlautin's most moving and affecting novel to date.

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''Tremendously compelling . . . as succinct and wrenching as a well-honed folk song.'' GUARDIANA bruised and beautiful instant classic.' BEN MYERSWilly Vlautin's most personal novel yet a poetic and deeply moving story about what it really takes to be a musician.There''s a horse'', he whispered. ''An old horse that''s standing in front of my house. He''s blind and he won''t eat and I don''t know what to do.''65-year-old Al Ward is several years into an isolated stint living on old mining land in Nevada left to him by his great uncle. One morning, the horse arrives outside his home, seemingly unable to feed itself or stay safe from coyote attacks. 6000 feet up, 30 miles from the nearest town and broken by alcoholism and anxiety, Al must decide what to do.Intercut with Al's present-day story are episodes from his long life as a songwriter and guitarist. Beginning in Reno, we follow his chequered career

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Opening like an early Tom Waits barstool-tale, The Motel Life tells the story of two brothers, Frank and Jerry Lee. Taking to the road in an attempt to escape the hit and run accident caused by Jerry Lee, the novel goes back to tell the story of their unhappy lives. With intense feeling and compassion, Vlautin explores the frustrations and failed dreams of the two brothers - one a natural storyteller, the other an artist - and renders perfectly the sense of entrapment they feel. Will the kid's death shock them out of their torpor or send them ever deeper into trouble? Can Annie James, a girl from their past, offer them any sort of redemption, however slim?Interspersed with drawings that come to form an integral part of the narrative, The Motel Life is a poetic, moving, beautifully naïve and tragic fictional debut. Alongside such seminal works as Annie Proulx's Postcards, Raymond Carver's What we talk about when we talk about love and Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son, it should come to be seen as a classic of downbeat American prose.

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'Pacey and visceral.' Sunday Times'Imbued with the noirish urgency of a page-turning thriller.' Irish Times'A tear-struck revelation.' MEGAN ABBOTTBetween looking after her brother, working two low-paid jobs, and trying to take part-time college classes, Lynette is dangerously tired. Every penny she's earned for years, she's put into savings, trying to scrape together enough to take out a mortgage on the house she rents with her mother. Finally becoming a homeowner in their rapidly gentrifying Portland neighbourhood could offer Lynette the kind of freedoms she's never had. But, when the plan is derailed, Lynette must embark on a desperate odyssey of hope and anguish.Written with all Willy Vlautin's characteristic and heart-wrenching empathy, The Night Always Comes holds up a mirror to a society which leaves too many people only a step away from falling between the cracks.What readers are saying:'Amazing . . . Vlautin hit the nail on the head with this. I could not stop thinking about the characters and where the story would take them.''WOW. This book hit me hard . . . I was on the edge of my seat.''The book pulls you into the story and you can't wait to find out what happens next.''Fabulous . . . part suspenseful action and part deep character study.

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'Pacey and visceral.' Sunday Times'Imbued with the noirish urgency of a page-turning thriller.' Irish Times'Terrific.' Richard Russo'A revelation.' Megan AbbottBetween looking after her brother, attending night classes, and the combination of jobs she juggles, Lynette is dangerously tired. And when, after years of trying to scrape together enough for a mortgage, her plan is derailed, she must embark on a desperate odyssey through a city of greed.Set over two days and nights, The Night Always Comes holds up a mirror to a society which leaves too many people only a step away from ruin.What readers are saying:'Amazing . . . Vlautin hit the nail on the head with this. I could not stop thinking about the characters and where the story would take them.''WOW. This book hit me hard . . . I was on the edge of my seat.''The book pulls you into the story and you can't wait to find out what happens next.''Fabulous . . . part suspenseful action and part deep character study.'

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Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson wants a home; food on the table; a high school he can attend for more than part of a year; and some structure to his life. But as the son of a single father working at warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, he's been pretty much on his own for some time.Lean on Pete opens as he and his father arrive in Portland, Oregon and Charley takes a stables job, illegally, at the local race track. Once part of a vibrant racing network, Portland Meadows is now seemingly the last haven for washed up jockeys and knackered horses, but it's there that Charley meets Pete, an old horse who becomes his companion as he's forced to try to make his own way in the world.

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Fleeing Las Vegas and her abusive boyfriend, Allison Johnson moves to Reno, but finds herself haunted by the mistakes of her past, and lacking any self-belief. Her only comfort seems to come from the imaginary conversations she has with her hero, Paul Newman. But, as life crawls on, small acts of kindness do start to reveal themselves and slowly the chance of a new life begins to emerge. Full of memorable characters and imbued with a beautiful sense of yearning, Northline is an extraordinary portrait of small-town America and an emotional tour de force.

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“Soaked in booze and sadness, psychotic eruptions and hilarity.”—Willy VlautinIn the freewheeling, debaucherous tradition of Charles Bukowski, a taxi driver’s stories from the streets of lowlife Los Angeles—with an introduction by Willy Vlautin. “Dan Fante is an authentic literary outlaw.”—New York Times. Dan Fante lived the stories he wrote. His voice has the immediacy of a stranger of the next barstool, of a friend who lives on the edge. As he writes in Short Dog (the title is street slang for a half-pint of alcohol): I had been back working a cabbie gig as a result of my need for money. And insanity. Hack driver is the only occupation I know about with no boss, and because I have always performed poorly at supervised employment, I returned to the taxi business. The up side, now that I was working again, was that my own boozing was under control and I was on beer only, except for my days off.Fante was the son of famed novelist and screenwriter John Fante, but as the Los Angeles Times wrote, the younger Fante “… allows us a glimpse of the Southern California demimonde that surely escaped his father’s attention.”These outsider stories are raw, vivid, and brutally honest. But even when the stories are fueled by anger and disgust, they are punctuated by unexpectedly funny and dark-humored vignettes. Short Dog is for readers ready for a cab ride on the wild side.

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This Side of the Divide: New Lore of the American West is the second entry in the Divide anthology series attempting to capture the newness, vastness, territoriality, and sense of transience alive in the American West. In this collection legends, myths, tales, omens, folk horror, and science fiction explore the fantastical, the apocalyptic, the bizarre, the unknown, and the apocryphal origins and conclusions of life on the occidental side of the Continental Divide. In this collection, after the ‘what is’ comes the ‘what will be’, as acclaimed authors and emerging voices weave tales that push the boundaries of imagination: Ken Liu takes us to the frontiers of America and China in a stark tale of perseverance; Kate Bernheimer immerses us in the fairytale lands of modern celebrity; Benjamin Percy takes us hunting for deer and connection in eastern Oregon; Yuri Herrera grants us insight on our future overlords; Tessa Fontaine places us in-between with a monster and a question; Dominique Dickey chases familiar ghosts; and Willy Vlautin takes us on the wild ride that is a winning streak. Accompanied by a foreword from This Side of the Divide alum, and author of The Forbidden City, Vanessa Hua, these twenty-five pieces of new lore excavate the beauty, the uncertainty, the longing, the bitter interactions and stark truths; the strong people and vivid places that have shaped, and will continue to shape the West until the end of days.

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