Almost a decade ago, on a dirt road in central Nevada, The Horse author Willy Vlautin encountered his latest novel’s titular animal. Realising the horse was completely blind and barely surviving, the experience saddened Vlautin so greatly he started to plan his retreat from the cruelty of daily life, to live in a derelict building on an abandoned mine site.

Ultimately, he never went through with it, choosing family over solitude. Instead, he channelled this experience into latest novel The Horse. Here, we meet Al Ward – a 65-year-old, alcoholic musician, living alone on a former mining claim 30 miles from the nearest town. 

Vlautin, also a musician himself, introduces the novel by recalling time spent around great songwriters who go largely unnoticed, barely making ends meet. Ward is such a character: one who has chosen a solitary life, living on tinned food, the better to scratch his songwriting itch all day. Ward’s anxiety is heightened when he discovers a blind, helpless horse stranded outside. What will he do? 

Moving back and forth between Ward’s colourful, painful past and his current dilemma, Vlautin pays implicit tribute to talented, damaged outsiders who steadfastly pursue a creative vision, the result falling somewhere between Charles Bukowski and Cormac McCarthy.