A testament to hope amid a lifetime of adversity, Willy Vlautin's seventh novel, The Horse, returns to the author's familiar Nevada setting, where 67-year-old recluse Al Ward reflects on his past and considers the odds of successfully completing one last act of kindness. Al's story opens in a freezing, abandoned single-room miner's shack in the high desert, where he exists on canned soup and tequila. Like Vlautin (The Night Always Comes; Don't Skip Out on Me), Al is a musician and a songwriter, and dozens of song titles weave throughout Al's history, including "A Drink Before Work" and "Darkness Is the Only Friend I've Ever Had." The Horse alternates between Al's life spent traveling with bands and the isolated winter when he discovers a blind horse standing in a snowstorm just outside his door.
A sympathetic character, Al has musical talent that affords him opportunities, but alcohol and naivete repeatedly derail his career and relationships. Filled with self-doubt and settled in the shack, he wonders at the horse, which is unmoving and refuses the scraps of nourishment Al offers. He contemplates the life the horse might have had, the hope it might have once had "that it would never end up blind in the middle of nowhere with no friends and no outcome other than death." Al's empathy for the horse exemplifies his compassion, and he determines that, bucking the odds, he will find help for the creature. Vlautin parallels this quest with stories of Al's loves and losses, suggesting that decency will see him through. The Horse is a beautifully atmospheric tale of sorrow and recurring hope. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.