Name: Run for the Hills
Rating: 4 (3 reviews)
Author: Kevin Wilson

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Book Summary

An unexpected road trip across America brings a family together, in this raucous and moving new novel from the bestselling author of Nothing to See Here.

Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it's just been Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While she sometimes admits it's a bit lonely and a less exciting life than she imagined for herself, it's mostly OK. Mostly.

Then one day Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she's his half sister. Reuben—left behind by their dad thirty years ago—has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of other half siblings. And he wants Mad to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all.

As Mad and Rube—and eventually the others—share stories of their father, who behaved so differently in each life he created, they begin to question what he was looking for with each new incarnation. Who are they to one another? What kind of man will they find? And how will these new relationships change Mad's previously solitary life on the farm?

Infused with deadpan wit, zany hijinks, and enormous heart, Run for the Hills is a sibling story like no other—a novel about a family forged under the most unlikely circumstances and united by hope in an unknown future.

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What are you reading this week? (9/04/2025)
...great big thank you to everyone in the forum who mentioned this book as a worthy read. You were not wrong! I have just downloaded and started reading Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson.
-Sunny

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Media Reviews

"Though the tone verges on saccharine, Wilson's character work is top-notch, and he makes clear how the foursome struggle to connect in part because their father was a different man while raising each of them. This has less bite than Wilson's best work, but there's still plenty of heart." —Publishers Weekly

"Fans will pounce on the latest from this beloved author of offbeat family fiction." —Booklist

"Wilson's living narrative is a combination road novel, domestic drama and snapshot of rural America. Amid the seemingly carefree attitudes are profound questions. What would lead a man to abandon not just one family, but several? And what would it feel like to discover that the only family you've ever known is not the only family you have? Run for the Hills raises these questions and more with endearing aplomb. Forgiveness is difficult, sometimes, but these newly introduced siblings give it their best in this colorful novel." —BookPage

This information about Run for the Hills was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Cloggie Downunder

A tale full of hope and heart and humour.
“Their father had never been a bad parent. He had always been attentive, loving and patient. He had only become a bad parent when he disappeared, when he ceased to be a part of their life.”

Run For The Hills is the fifth novel by award-winning American author, Kevin Wilson. When Reuben (Rube) Hill turns up at the successful organic Tennessee farm that she runs with her mother, claiming to be her older half-brother, Madeline (Mad) Hill struggles to see the father she knew, who left when she was ten, in the man Rube describes. Could the Boston insurance salesman and novelist who left Rube and his mom over three decades earlier possibly be the same man as the Tennessee farmer who claimed to be from Maine? And yet, and yet….

As if that’s not shocking enough, Rube tells her that Charles (Chuck) Hill went on to abandon at least two more partners with offspring. He’s following his father’s trail across America, intending meet the other half-siblings before he confronts the old man himself, now, according the investigator he hired, living in California. Will Mad come with him?

Mad’s mother encourages her to go, to connect with this new half-brother, and to get some answers about her father. Soon enough, they are driving, in Rube’s rented PT Cruiser, towards the next-in-line sibling in Oklahoma. Will they get to meet more of their half-siblings? Will those offspring of Charles Hill want to join their quest-of-sorts? Will they find their dad? How will it all turn out?

As she learns from her siblings, along the way, about the differences and similarities their father displayed in each iteration, what he did for each child, Mad muses that “Maybe every single moment of loving someone you helped make was connected to this low-level terror that hurt your heart,” and wonders “Is this why their father left them?” But is the truth perhaps less altruistic…?

What an original premise on which to build a story! Wilson gives each of the siblings a narrative voice, some to a greater degree, revealing four characters with depth and appeal with whom only the hardest of hearts won’t feel empathy. The dialogue is delightful, often laugh-out-loud (and occasionally, darkly) funny, and the ultimate resolution is realistic. The cover by Alan Fears is perfect. A tale full of hope and heart and humour.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Text Publishing.

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Author Information

Biography
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Kevin Wilson Author Biography

Photo: Leigh Anne Couch

Kevin Wilson is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Nothing to See Here, which was a Read with Jenna book club selection; The Family Fang, which was adapted into an acclaimed film starring Nicole Kidman and Jason Bateman; and Perfect Little World; as well as the story collections Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award; and Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine. His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Southern Review, One Story, A Public Space, and Best American Short Stories. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife and two sons.

Link to Kevin Wilson's Website