The Free: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
A Paperback Original
Award-winning author Willy Vlautin demonstrates his extraordinary talent for confronting issues facing modern America, illuminated through the lives of three memorable characters who are looking for a way out of their financial, familial, and existential crises, in his heartbreaking and hopeful fourth novel
Leroy Kervin is a 31 year old Iraqi War veteran living with a traumatic brain injury. Unable to dress or feed himself, or cope with his emotions, he has spent the last seven years in a group home. There he spends his days watching old sci-fi movies until he awakens one night with a clear mind and memories of his girlfriend. Realizing what his life has been he decides it would be better to die than to go on living this way. A failed suicide attempt leaves Leroy hospitalized where he retreats further into his mind in order to make sense of his existence.
Freddie McCall is a middle aged father working two jobs. He's lost his wife and kids, and is close to losing his house. He's buried in debt, unable to pay the medical bills from his daughter's childhood illness. As Freddie's situation becomes more desperate he undertakes a risky endeavor he hopes will solve his problems but could possibly end in disaster. Just as Freddie is about to lose it all, he is faced with the possibility of getting his kids back.
Pauline Hawkins takes care of everyone else around her. She cares for her mentally ill father out of a deep sense of obligation. As a nurse at the local hospital, she treats her patients and their families with a familiar warmth and tenderness. When Pauline becomes attached to a young runaway, she learns the difficult lesson that you can't help someone who doesn't help themselves.
The lives of these three characters intersect as they look for meaning in desperate times. Willy Vlautin covers themes ranging from health care to the economic downturn and housing crisis, to the toll war takes on veterans and their families. The Free is an extraordinary portrait of contemporary America and a testament to the resiliency of the human heart.
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Willy Vlautin. (2014). The Free: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Willy Vlautin. 2014. The Free: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Willy Vlautin, The Free: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2014.
MLA Citation (style guide)Willy Vlautin. The Free: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2014.
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Willy Vlautin is the author of the novels The Motel Life, Northline, Lean on Pete, The Free, Don't Skip Out on Me, and The Night Always Comes. He is the founding member of the bands Richmond Fontaine and The Delines.
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A Paperback Original
Award-winning author Willy Vlautin demonstrates his extraordinary talent for confronting issues facing modern America, illuminated through the lives of three memorable characters who are looking for a way out of their financial, familial, and existential crises, in his heartbreaking and hopeful fourth novel
Leroy Kervin is a 31 year old Iraqi War veteran living with a traumatic brain injury. Unable to dress or feed himself, or cope with his emotions, he has spent the last seven years in a group home. There he spends his days watching old sci-fi movies until he awakens one night with a clear mind and memories of his girlfriend. Realizing what his life has been he decides it would be better to die than to go on living this way. A failed suicide attempt leaves Leroy hospitalized where he retreats further into his mind in order to make sense of his existence.
Freddie McCall is a middle aged father working two jobs. He's lost his wife and kids, and is close to losing his house. He's buried in debt, unable to pay the medical bills from his daughter's childhood illness. As Freddie's situation becomes more desperate he undertakes a risky endeavor he hopes will solve his problems but could possibly end in disaster. Just as Freddie is about to lose it all, he is faced with the possibility of getting his kids back.
Pauline Hawkins takes care of everyone else around her. She cares for her mentally ill father out of a deep sense of obligation. As a nurse at the local hospital, she treats her patients and their families with a familiar warmth and tenderness. When Pauline becomes attached to a young runaway, she learns the difficult lesson that you can't help someone who doesn't help themselves.
The lives of these three characters intersect as they look for meaning in desperate times. Willy Vlautin covers themes ranging from health care to the economic downturn and housing crisis, to the toll war takes on veterans and their families. The Free is an extraordinary portrait of contemporary America and a testament to the resiliency of the human heart.
- reviews
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"A portrait of American life that is so hard and so heartbreaking that it should be unbearable, but it isn't. The straightforward beauty of Vlautin's writing, and the tender care he shows his characters, turns a story of struggle into indispensable reading. I couldn't recommend it more highly." — Ann Patchett
"Courageous, powerful, and mercifully refreshing, The Free is nothing less than an affirmation, that rare novel about lost souls which dares to be hopeful in the face of despair. Vlautin's hard knock characters will break your heart with their humanity and grace." — Jonathan Evison, author of The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving
"The Free is a graceful portrayal of an underrepresented side of American life. Willy Vlautin never overreaches, or takes the easy road, and his words have the heft of permanence." — Patrick deWitt, author of The Sister Brothers
"The Free is another outstanding book from one of America's most underappreciated artists." — George Pelecanos
"Willy Vlautin is one of the bravest novelists writing.... An unsentimental Steinbeck, a heartbroken Haruf, Willy Vlautin tells us who really lives now in our America, our city in ruins." — Ursula K. Le Guin
"Willy Vlautin's magnificent novel The Free is as raw as it is beautiful, as brutal as it is honest. But despite the difficult truths of his intertwined tales, Vlautin's characters will lift you up with their quiet compassion and profound dignity." — Ivy Pochoda, author of Visitation Street
"Brilliant and beautiful...what a gorgeous book. There are so few writers out there with such ambitious humility." — Sarah Hall
"Few contemporary western writers tell the truth with the unerring eye of Willy Vlautin, a literary realist whose emotionally charged characters achieve that rarest of goals in fiction-to tell a great story, and The Free is Vlautin at his best." — Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries, the basis for A&E's hit series Longmire
"Willy Vlautin writes novels about people all alone in the wind. His prose is direct and complex in its simplicity, and his stories are sturdy and bighearted and full of lives so shattered they shimmer." — Cheryl Strayed, The Oregonian
"...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. Vlautin writes cleanly, beautifully about the people who hang on despite odds.... A fine novel...bounded by courage and kindliness." — Kirkus Reviews
"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....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." — Publishers Weekly
"With straightforward economy, he draws us into [the characters'] seemingly intractable problems, revealing their persistence and decency... Vlautin's unadorned narrative is affecting; these unassuming characters bore into us in surprising ways." — New York Times Book Review
"With heartbreaking yet hopeful prose Vlautin weaves together a brutally honest tale of pain and isolation in America....Vlautin's novels cast a spotlight on the underclass and underbelly of this land and gives voice to those who may no longer have one." —...
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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,
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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.COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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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.)
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A Paperback Original
Award-winning author Willy Vlautin demonstrates his extraordinary talent for confronting issues facing modern America, illuminated through the lives of three memorable characters who are looking for a way out of their financial, familial, and existential crises, in his heartbreaking and hopeful fourth novel
Leroy Kervin is a 31 year old Iraqi War veteran living with a traumatic brain injury. Unable to dress or feed himself, or cope with his emotions, he has spent the last seven years in a group home. There he spends his days watching old sci-fi movies until he awakens one night with a clear mind and memories of his girlfriend. Realizing what his life has been he decides it would be better to die than to go on living this way. A failed suicide attempt leaves Leroy hospitalized where he retreats further into his mind in order to make sense of his existence.
Freddie McCall is a middle aged father working two jobs. He's lost his wife and...
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