The Night Always Comes

Saddled with bad credit and juggling multiple jobs, some illegally, Lynette diligently works to buy the house she lives in with her mother and developmentally disabled brother, Kenny. Portland’s housing prices have nearly quadrupled in fifteen years, and the owner is giving them a good deal. Lynette knows it’s their last best chance to own a home — and obtain the security they’ve never had. While she has enough for the down payment, she needs her mother to cover the rest of the asking price. But a week before they’re set to sign the loan papers, her mother reneges on her promise, pushing Lynette to her limits to find the money they need.
 
Set over two days and two nights, The Night Always Comes follows Lynette’s frantic search — an odyssey of hope and anguish that will bring her face-to- face with greedy rich men and ambitious hustlers, those benefiting and those left behind by a city in the throes of a transformative boom. As her desperation builds and her pleas for help go unanswered, Lynette makes a dangerous choice that sets her on a precarious, frenzied spiral. In trying to save her family’s future, she is plunged into the darkness of her past and forced to confront the reality of her life.

“Remarkable, real, and tender, The Night Always Comes is a story of America, of the disenfranchised and the still hopeful, of a world littered with artifacts and so little opportunity. Willy Vlautin's characters blaze with honesty, fighting for their slim chance at the American dream, leaving us to wonder if it was all a charade. An amazing achievement.” Rene Denfeld

“The trick to writing a great thriller is both simple and very, very difficult: make us care about the person whose life is in jeopardy. I can’t remember the last time I worried myself sick about a fictional character the way I did about Lynette in Willy Vlautin’s terrific, big-hearted new novel The Night Always Comes. You won’t soon forget either her or the fraught world she so courageously navigates.” Richard Russo, Author of Empire Falls and Chances Are…

“I finished reading this novel dripping with admiration for Willy Vlautin and the tough wonder he has brought forth. The Night Always Comes hits the high-water mark; there is skillful and beautiful objectivity to the writing, characters so real that when they bleed you get a few drops on your sleeve, and a story of economic want and desperation and heart.” Daniel Woodrell, Author of Winter’s Bone and The Maid’s Version

Willy Vlautin is also the author of the novels The Motel Life; Northline; Lean on Pete, which won two Oregon Book Awards; The Free, which won an Oregon Book Award; and Don’t Skip Out on Me, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and an ALA Notable Book. Vlautin lives outside Portland, Oregon, and is the founding member of the bands Richmond Fontaine and The Delines.