Don't Skip Out on Me - Tapa dura

"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 a writer with incredible heart, and The Free is his best achievement yet, a profound look at characters living on the margins, honest people who have been hit hard by the dark realities of a difficult world."--Los Angeles Review of Books

"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..."--Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries

"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

"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 on The Free

"A debut road-trip novel that echoes the spare, bleak style of such writers as Denis Johnson and Raymond Carver...[Vlautin] conveys the pain and desolate lives of his characters without a hint of melodrama"--Washington Post (on The Motel Life)

"Northline shines with naked honesty and unsentimental humanity. The character of Allison Johnson, and the wounded-but-still-walking people she encounters on her journey, will stay with me for a long while. Vlautin has written the American novel that I've been hoping to find."--George Pelecanos

"I love Willy Vlautin's novels. Downbeat and plaintive as they are, the tenderness holds on like the everlasting arms.... Willy's voice is pure and his stories universal. He never loses hope or heart and I believe every word he's written."--Barry Gifford

"Lean on Pete riveted me. Reading it, I was heartbroken and moved; enthralled and convinced. This is serious American literature."--Cheryl Strayed, The Oregonian

"Willy's novel Lean on Pete was one of my favorite reads of the last decade. I might love The Free even more. 'Cinematic minimalism' in the grand tradition of Fat City, Ironweed, and the works of the great Raymond Carver.--Patterson Hood, songwriter and musician, Drive-By Truckers