Lean On Pete

Willy Vlautin

Charley, the narrator and protagonist, is a 15-year-old boy with a fairly simple dream: he’d like a home with some hot food on the table, a high school he can attend for more than part of a year, and some structure to his life.

But as the son of an affectionate but negligent single father, a rolling stone who works his way through warehouses across the Pacific Northwest and entertains a series of temporary girlfriends as he goes, this isn’t an option. Charley finds he’s on his own for much of the time — and often without enough to eat.