Lean on Pete: A Novel

Willy Vlautin's award-winning novel follows the story of a newly orphaned fifteen-year old-boy struggling to make his way to a long lost aunt, who just might give him a home—now a major motion picture starring Chloë Sevigny (American Horror Story), Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire) and Travis Fimmel (Warcraft) and directed by Andrew Haigh (45 Years, Looking).

Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson wants a home, food on the table, and a high school he can attend for more than part of a year. But as the son of a single father working in warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, Charley's been pretty much on his own. When tragic events leave him homeless weeks after their move to Portland, Oregon, Charley seeks refuge in the tack room of a run-down horse track. Charley's only comforts are his friendship with a failing racehorse named Lean on Pete and a photograph of his only known relative. In an increasingly desperate circumstance, Charley will head east, hoping to find his aunt who had once lived a thousand miles away in Wyoming—but the journey to find her will be a perilous one.

In Lean on Pete, Willy Vlautin reveals the lives and choices of American youth like Charley Thompson who were failed by those meant to protect them and who were never allowed the chance to just be a kid.

“The writing is spare and straightforward. . . . There is intensity in Vlautin’s narration, and also beauty and power . . . Vlautin’s major accomplishment lies in posing a damning question: How could we, as a society, have allowed this to happen?”— Seattle Times