The Free

October 7, 2013
This strong fourth novel from Portland singer/songwriter and author Vlautin (The Motel Life) follows three protagonists who find the strength to make the best of difficult situations. Leroy Kervin, an Iraq War veteran gravely wounded in a roadside-bomb explosion seven years ago, is an inpatient at a male group home in Washington State, where his longtime girlfriend, Jeanette, and mother, Darla, sometimes come to visit. Severely depressed, he attempts suicide by jumping out of an upper-story window, which leaves him bedridden. Freddie McCall, a night orderly at the home, works a second job at a paint store to pay off the debts incurred by medical treatment for his young, physically handicapped daughter, Virginia, who lives with his ex in Las Vegas. Pauline Hawkins, a hospital nurse now caring for Leroy, lives alone with her pet rabbit and keeps an eye on her dysfunctional father. As Leroy succumbs even more to his depression, he has a series of increasingly bizarre, violent dreams involving him and Jeanette being pursued by a relentless vigilante militia calling itself “the Free.” Pauline tries to save a 16-year-old patient who’s become addicted to heroin, while Freddie learns he may have a chance to be reunited with his family. Despite the grim trajectory of Leroy’s story, Pauline and Freddie’s innate decency adds a refreshingly positive note to Vlautin’s character-driven novel. Agent: Anna Stein O’Sullivan, Aitken Alexander Associates,

November 15, 2013
Vlautin's fourth novel (Lean on Pete, 2010, etc.), about damaged people caring for each other across a spectrum of society. Vlautin creates a community of survivors through a handful of well-wrought characters, each linked to the others through the attempted suicide by Leroy Kervin, a disabled Iraq war veteran who seizes a moment of clarity to escape his irreparable life. Freddie is a night caretaker at the group home where Leroy lives with his fear while fighting desperation at not being able to support his family. At the hospital, Pauline nurses him and another new patient, Jo, a runaway from a harsh world beyond her comprehension. The broken, the poor and the desperate fill this book--with dignity. Each one cares for another with grace and humility. Set in motion by Leroy's deliberate plunge down the stairs onto a wooden stake, the book examines the characters' individual humanness, peculiarly American in spirit. This is a story of our times--about the lack of work, the cost of health insurance, the demonizing of war and the damage to life in the working class. At first odd and magical, the narrative becomes more violent and hate-filled. "The Free" of the novel's title appear in a Cormac McCarthy-like vision of a demonic wasteland. Vlautin writes cleanly, beautifully about the people who hang on despite odds. This is a fine novel, grim but bounded by courage and kindliness.

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Starred review from February 15, 2014
There are a number of musician-novelists turning out fine work in both fields, but singer-songwriter Vlautin (he performs with the band Richmond Fontaine) is clearly at the head of this multitalented group. From The Motel Life (2007) through Lean on Pete (2010), he has chronicled, in unsparing, unsentimental prose, the lives of bighearted working-class folk on the wrong side of the economic spectrum. His fourth novel returns to the same terrain, but the ante is upped a notch here as he focuses on the lives of three people in small-town Washington State who face insurmountable obstacles but do so with remarkable grace under pressure. Leroy Kervin is a severely injured veteran of the Iraq War, confined to a nursing home, who lives in an alternate world that is every bit as dystopian as real life; Pauline Hawkins is a single woman who works as a caregiver in the home where Leroy lives and who attempts to save another patient, a heroin-addicted teen in danger from abscesses caused by dirty needles; Freddie McCall, the night man at Leroy's group home, works two jobs but is slowly, inevitably losing everything in his effort to support his daughters, living in Nevada with their mother. At times, reading the heartbreaking, interlocking stories of these circumstance-ravaged souls can almost seem unbearable, but just when you're ready to put the book down in despair, Vlautin delivers a moment of not hope exactly but unvarnished, aching humanity that takes your breath away. There are no winners hereand certainly no conventional happy endings (only an occasional, fleeting break in the cloud cover)but, most important, and this is Vlautin's point, there are no losers, either.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)