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.