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Recipient of the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
"One of America's greatest storytellers."-Jonathan Evison
The acclaimed Willy Vlautin returns with a heartbreaking and tender novel about two young brothers, the vicissitudes of fate, and unexpected connection-a beautiful and bittersweet portrait that illuminates the power of friendship and how it can save lives in multiple ways.
Eddie Wilkens is a workaholic house painter in his early forties. His wife has left him to her regret, and his main employee, Houston, is a loafer and scoundrel who barely shows up for work. Unassuming and self-reliant, Eddie is thoughtful man who rarely gets angry, despite life's frequent provocations, but he is ruled by a guilt that he has carried for nearly twenty years.
Next door, a woman and her two sons move in with her frail and aging mother. The youngest boy, Russell, eight-years-old, is quiet and small for his age and lives in constant terror of his increasingly lost and troubled fifteen-year-old brother, Curtis. As their mother struggles to keep the family together and the grandmother's health begins to faulter they find themselves unable to protect Russell and themselves from Curtis's cruelty, which threatens to explode in frenetic violence.
Though neither knows it, Russell and Eddie will become each other's saving grace.
While Russell's home life disintegrates he begins waiting in Eddie's backyard for him to get off work. Eddie offers the boy small acts of kindness: he feeds him, gives him jobs to do, listens to his dreams of escape, and offers Russell a glimpse into a world of hope and humor. A world of misfit painters, a derelict muscle car, an old dog, and the comradery and companionship of Eddie and his crew. In return, Russell gives Eddie a reason to carry on and helps him lay to rest the guilt that has plagued him for half of his life.
Together, this makeshift father and son begin to build better life, daring to trade the bleakness and cynicism around them for hope and friendship.
From a writer revered for his thoughtful and compassionate portrayal of realistic American life, The Left and the Lucky is a heartbreakingly honest examination of how circumstance shapes our lives, and how the luck of finding someone who needs us can transcend bitter loneliness and prevent us from giving up on dreaming of a better life.
"The Left and the Lucky is a gem of a story filled with quiet misfits, miscreants, and the misunderstood, each, in their own way, keeping hope alive and the small wins counted. Willy Vlautin's understanding of masculinity, grief, and the bonds found families forge is palpable. Deeply forgiving and memorable, Vlautin is a true chronicler of the human heart." - Tammy Armstrong, Author of Pearly Everlasting
"No one anywhere writes with such power and such stark beauty about American desperation and want, American loneliness and heartache. We need Willy Vlautin like we needed Johnny Cash, like we needed Larry McMurtry-he's essential and every book he writes proves it all over again." -Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Full Throttle and Strange Weather
"The Left and the Lucky is a heartbreaking, gritty, funny, and sensitive portrait of American life, complete with rich characters and a really great dog. I loved the main characters, Eddie and Russell, and read their story in one big gulp. Willy Vlautin is a terrific, emphatic writer." -Annie Hartnett, author of The Road to Tender Hearts
"Brimming with compassion and hard-won tenderness . . . the sort of novel you eagerly press into the hands of those you love." -Colin Walsh, Author of Kala
"One of Vlautin' s signature gifts is allowing his characters to navigate the uneasy coexistence of resilience and resignation. Hope survives in small increments-temporary reprieves rather than salvation. Ultimately, Vlautin suggests that dignity can exist even, or especially, in lives defined by struggle and loss, and that such fortitude may be the ultimate triumph of the human spirit." - Booklist (Starred Review)
"With genuine affection, Vlautin captures his characters' humanity and longing, showing, for example, how Russell daydreams about escaping to an island where he can live without fear. Readers will fall in love with this ode to a struggling community." -Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"A. . . compassionate and life-affirming tale about how human connection is critical to survival."
-Kirkus (Starred Review)
"Willy Vlautin applies his characteristic compassion and spare tone to an unlikely friendship in The Left and the Lucky, a novel of hard times and scant hope. . . . Vlautin continues to focus upon an American underclass marked by desperation and poverty, people often forgotten or abandoned. With a gruff tenderness, a quiet lyricism, and moments of humor. . . . Vlautin's character sketches and the careful value he places on perseverance are not soon forgotten." -Shelf Awareness
"Willy Vlautin has a way of writing about the simplest elements of living and making them emotional and heartfelt. You care about the characters and what happens to them." - Book Reporter
"Vlautin explores a theme rarely seen in literature: the male caregiver. . . . Vlautin's writing is so easy and strong, he conveys characters and scenes through vivid detail. He can explain a character through the items he or she buys at the grocery store or the smell of their environment." - spokesman. com.
Praise for THE HORSE:
"A moving tale of suffering and redemption, The Horse portrays the immense gravity of what it takes to be human in tough times, and the elusive grace that might just be grasped from music, animals, and memory." - Geraldine Brooks
"Willy Vlautin writes about people overlooked by society and overlooked by literature. In The Horse, he tells the story of a tenderhearted man who has a steady talent and a crushing addiction. It is both a work of extraordinary compassion and a really great novel." - Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake
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