is lead singer and songwriter in the band Richmond Fontaine but also an accomplished and marvellous novelist.
This, his second novel, follows Allison Johnson from her hometown in Reno to a new life in Portland. She’s fleeing an abusive relationship, a set of bad choices and the terror of her inner thoughts. She arrives in the new city but things don’t go according to plan and she finds that life is hard everywhere. But along the way she meets people who show her that goodness and kindness are to be found too.
Vlautin writes with a concise and laconic tenderness, filled with compassion and empathy, as Johnson begins to put her life together, finding in the kindness of others everything that is missing from her life. A wonderful and poignant examination of life on the margins, making Vlautin the foremost poet of the dispossesed.