Review by Kevin Brown
Kevin Wilson’s latest novel, Run for the Hills, continues to develop themes from his most recent works, especially the idea of family and what that looks like in the twenty-first century. The main character Mad — short for Madeline — lives on a successful farm in rural Tennessee with her mother, as her father left them when she was young, and she’s never heard from him again. A man just over a decade older shows up at their roadside stand claiming to be her half-brother, as his father left him and his mother, then started a new life in Tennessee.
This development leads to a road trip, as Rube — short for Reuben, as their father loved nicknames — has had a private investigator discover that their father has two more children and is now living yet another life in California. They drive across the country picking up Pep, short for Pepper, and Tom, short (sort of) for Theron, on their way to California.
They all share the same experience, that of their father leaving, but their father reinvented himself with each new family, moving from being a detective novelist to an organic farmer to a basketball coach to a camera man/filmmaker. Thus, while each child shares the same experience of abandonment, they each have a different view of their father.
Along the way, they bond with one another through their childhood trauma, but also their love for this man who was a good father to each of them until he left and never contacted them again. They each discover what it’s like to have siblings to rely on, to tease, and even to fight with. They know they’re going to have to go home again, no matter what they find at the end of the trip, but this newfound family may help them make peace with the lives they currently live.
Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson. Ecco, May 2025.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
