Run For The Hills – Kevin Wilson

I never cease to be amazed by the creative mind of Kevin Wilson, so when I saw he was writing an American road trip novel, I was salivating at the chance to read it. My friends at Text Publishing were kind enough to send me a copy of Run For The Hills for review, and it went straight to the top of my to-read pile.

Mad’s father ran out on her, her mother, and their family farm in Tennessee twenty years ago. She thinks there’s not much more to the story… until a man shows up at her market stall, explaining that he’s her half-brother. It turns out their father had done the exact same thing to another family, and another, and another. There’s siblings all across America, and Rube wants to bring them all together to finally confront him. Mad is his first stop on the Hill sibling reunion road trip.

Run For The Hills moves quickly – the road trip to find the third sibling (a college basketball phenom named Pep) is already well underway just 50 pages in. Wilson gradually ratchets up the tension, though, as more siblings come on board, until it’s all you can think about by the start of the third act. WHY did their father do this? SO MANY times?

Of course, the story is punctuated with Wilson’s trademark wry dark humour. It’s a very self-aware novel, with characters often saying exactly what you’re thinking. Wilson nailed magical realism in Nothing To See Here, and coming-of-age in Now Is Not The Time To Panic, and now he can add the road trip novel to his trophy shelf.

Read Run For The Hills on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)