Anytime I crack open a fresh Willy Vlautin novel, I brace myself to flip through a rolodex of misfortune. Most reviews of his work dutifully hit the same set of keywords to describe his worlds: downtrodden, fringe, bleak, down-and-out, hardscrabble, underbelly, endlessly sad—and my favorite, because it’s as spare and straightforward as Vlautin’s own prose: depressing. Vlautin himself once admitted in an interview with Oregon Artswatch, “That’s always been kind of a weakness of mine, making stuff too bleak.”