Download The Free: A Novel (P.S.) AudioBook Free
In his heartbreaking yet hopeful fourth novel, award-winning writer Willy Vlautin shows his extraordinary talent for illuminating the disquiet of modern American life, captured in the encounters of three memorable personas looking for indicating in distressing times. Greatly wounded in the Iraq warfare, Leroy Kervin has lived in a group home for eight years. Frustrated by the easiest daily regimens, he confirms his existence is becoming unbearable. An act of desperation helps him go away deep into his head, into a world of romance and science fiction, hazard and adventure where he's whole once more. Freddie McCall, the night man at Leroy's group home, works two jobs yet still can't make ends meet. He's lost his wife and kids, and the home is next. Medical bills have buried him in debt, a situation that propels him to look at a rewarding - and dangerous - proposition. Pauline Hawkins, a nurse, cares for the ill and wounded, including Leroy. She also looks after her mentally ill elderly father. Yet she remains psychologically removed, until she fits a runaway who touches something profound and unpredicted inside her. In crystalline prose, both beautiful and damaging, this 'major realist talent' (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) considers the issues transforming standard people's lives - the price of health care, having less financial opportunity, the damaging scars of warfare - creating an extraordinary contemporary family portrait that is also a testament to the resiliency of the human being heart.
