Willy Vlautin (Get this book) Vlautin's fourth novel is 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. "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.--Kirkus
