The Horse By Willy Vlautin

There's not another writer out there, living or dead, that I trust with my heart more than Willy Vlautin, and he breaks it every damn time. In Al Ward's love and loss, in his decency, his pathos, and his struggle to endure, Vlautin has gifted us a paean to the power of song. The Horse is another classic from one of America's greatest storytellers.
Jonathan Evison

I loved The Horse – for its melodic prose and its unflinching heart. This terrific parable of art and aging, laced within the bittersweet story of an old casino musician, is like the literary equivalent of a classic album by Tom Waits or Townes Van Zandt.
Jess Walter

Vlautin at his absolute finest – unflinching but full of heart. No one writes like him.
Doug Johnstone

The Horse marks the pinnacle of a writing career whose roots reach back past Springsteen to Steinbeck and beyond. A bruised and beautiful instant classic.
Ben Myers

I loved this novel so much, though it broke my heart again and again. 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

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

Vlautin's most satisfying book to date, with its central music narrative adorned with vivid vignettes of his usual offbeat, misfit characters … It all works superbly as he intersects tender, torn and frayed episodes of wrecks, drugs and rock'n'roll into Al's redemptive quest.
Irish Times

Holds hope – and a fair bit of music – in its heart.
Daily Mail

Vlautin pays implicit tribute to talented, damaged outsiders who steadfastly pursue a creative vision, the result falling somewhere between Charles Bukowski and Cormac McCarthy.
Buzz

Reminiscent of Townes Van Zandt's tragic ballad, “Tecumseh Valley”: it's a tragic life story, told with beauty and sincerity.
New Statesman

A triumph of hard, chiselled, beautiful language; of a great novelistic imagination and a huge heart.
Caught by the River

Set against the desolate majesty of the high desert, Vlautin's depiction of one broken soul trying to save another is aspirational, allegorical and, ultimately, transcendent … It just might be his masterpiece.
LA Times

Shot through with all the bruised romance and regret of a country-blues classic . . . Vlautin's characters are a vast chorus of broken hearts, reaching for grace.
Colin Walsh

He's a scribe of the underclass, reporting along the margins, teasing melodies from noise and silences.
Washington Post

Tremendously compelling . . . as succinct and wrenching as a well-honed folk song.
Observer