The Free - Softcover

'I love Willy Vlautin's books.' (Donna Tartt)

The beauty of The Free lies in Vlautin's unflinching, unsentimental writing; the characters here are wonderfully realised. (Kate Saunders, The Times)

Vlautin's stripped-down prose is simple yet brutally effective ... It is brave, brilliant, skilled and heartfelt writing about what lies at the very core of humanity. Everyone should read it. (The Big Issue)

Already on many 'book of the year' lists, Vlautin's fourth novel takes you deep ... [his] skill lies in making you root for all involved. (ShortList)

Beautiful and haunting ... whatever Vlautin breaks down in you, he builds back up. Walking away from The Free, I felt a renewed sense of humanity and hope ... In my estimation, no writer is doing more important work. (William Boyle, Los Angeles Review of Books)

Vlautin's unadorned narrative is affecting; these unassuming characters bore into us in surprising ways. (New York Times)

In The Free, Willy Vlautin gives us 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)

Vlautin is one of the bravest novelists writing. Murderers, cheats, sadists, showy examples of the banality of evil, are easy, but it takes real courage to write a novel about ordinary good people ... 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)

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)

Another outstanding book from one of America's most underappreciated artists. (George Pelecanos)

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.