Review of Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson

Run for the Hills is the most recent Kevin Wilson gem; his quirky characters are irresistible, and his heartwarming story is messy, strange, and lovely as a chosen-family element overshadows past tragedies and disappointments.

I'm a Kevin Wilson fan, and I'm here for all of his work. His wonderfully eccentric characters and story scenarios might seem self-consciously zany in another writer's hands, but in Wilson's novels, they allow for skillful, delightful, unexpected revelations and poignant character growth.

In Run for the Hills, Mad and her mother have run their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee, ever since Mad's father disappeared twenty years ago. Mad is a loner, and that's okay. But when a stranger who calls himself Rube shows up in a rented PT Cruiser and a story about how Mad is his half sister--explaining that their father has more kids spread across the country as well--Rube and Mad head out on an awkward, nerve-racking mission to find their siblings--and then try to track down their father.

Mad is quickly developing revenge fantasies involving her father, but a cross-country road trip in close quarters with Rube is a distraction, and, eventually a welcome one. As they locate two more siblings and bring them along to find their dad, each shares stories from their lives with him, comparing notes, picking apart details of each of his reinvented identities, and wondering what led him to abruptly leave each of them when he did. Each child ultimately realizes that any resentments, stories, justifications, or hopes they have built around their father pale in importance when compared to the unexpected gift of finding each other.

The tone of Run for the Hills feels reassuring in that everything seems headed toward resolutions. Wilson allows for confrontation, and he doesn't spare our characters a messy, somewhat unsatisfying reckoning involving their dad. He is, after all, an imperfect person whose fear of failure caused him to abandon each chance at a wonderfully imperfect life. The most tragic aspect isn't that his children were left, but that he missed out on time with these quirky, caring, wonderful oddballs who find that he is, ultimately, a relatively minor note in their newly formed, forever sibling family.

I received a prepublication edition of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Ecco.

More Kevin Wilson Love

This spring our local library foundation put on an event in which Kevin Wilson and Ann Patchett talked about writing, their friendship, and books they love. I'd first heard Wilson speak at the library foundation's annual fundraising event Verse & Vino, and my book club loved hearing him so much, we added his then-newest title to our reading list.

Kevin Wilson is also the author of Now Is Not the Time to Panic, Nothing to See Here, Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine, The Family Fang, Perfect Little World, and Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories.