Opening like an early Tom Waits barstool-tale, "The Motel Life" tells the story of two brothers, Frank and Jerry Lee, who take to the road in an attempt to escape the hit and run accident caused by Jerry Lee. With intense feeling and compassion, Vlautin explores the lives and frustrations of the two brothers - one a natural storyteller, the other an aspiring 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 form an integral part of the narrative, "The Motel Life" is a moving and beautifully naive debut that should come to be seen as a classic of downbeat American prose.

The Motel Life

WILLY VLAUTIN

Faber&Faber

With "echoes of Of Mice and Men"(The Bookseller, UK), The Motel Life explores the frustrations and failed dreams of two Nevada brothers—on the run after a hit-and-run accident—who, forgotten by society, and short on luck and hope, desperately cling to the edge of modern life.

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Lean On Pete

Faber and Faber

<p>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.</p>

Lean on Pete

The Free

Genre Fiction

The Night Always Comes: Willy Vlautin

The Night Always Comes

The Horse: 'Extraordinary.' Ann Patchett

Ulverscroft

[*Read by the author -- Willy Vlautin]Willy Vlautin demonstrates his extraordinary talent in his heartbreaking yet hopeful new novel, a tale that illuminates the disquiet of modern American life through three memorable characters. -- Severely wounded in the Iraq war, Leroy Kervin has lived in a group home for eight years. Frustrated by the simplest daily routines, a desperate act helps him disappear deep into his mind, where he is whole once again. Freddie McCall, the night man at Leroy's group home, works two jobs yet still can't make ends meet. Medical bills have buried him in debt, a situation that propels him to consider a dangerous proposition. Nurse Pauline Hawkins cares for the sick and wounded, including Leroy. Yet she remains emotionally removed, until she meets a young runaway who touches something unexpected inside her. Both beautiful and devastating, The Free is a testament to the resiliency of the human heart.

The Free: A Novel

United States

HarperCollins and Blackstone Audio

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Books by WILLY VLAUTIN