Run for the Hills – Kevin Wilson
Kevin Wilson books usually follow a pattern: high-concept premise, strong start, then a slow unraveling into sentiment or chaos. “Run for the Hills” still asks you to suspend disbelief (a lot of it), but for once, the absurdity holds.
It opens with a PT Cruiser pulling up to a Tennessee farm, where Madeline Hill has lived a mostly quiet life with her mother. Reuben Hill steps out, claiming to be her half-brother. He’s tracked down their absentee father — and a trail of half-siblings scattered across the country — and wants Mad to come along on a cross-country road trip to meet them.
The story leans heavily into road trip tropes, but the emotional throughline is sturdier than you’d expect. The half-siblings swap stories to try and triangulate whether they really had the same dad by way of favorite foods, weird quirks and what kind of failures or passions he passed on. Nature versus nurture is a quiet undercurrent, but the real theme here isn’t DNA — it’s chosen family, and the strange, accidental ways people end up belonging to each other.
I thought “Hills” had a sharpness and steadiness that some of Wilson’s earlier novels lacked. Maybe it’s because the focus is on adults this time around, who are all wildly successful and fully realized.
Pepper Hill, a March Madness-bound basketball phenom (with clear Caitlin Clark energy), is the standout: blunt, driven and quietly grieving. She’s vividly drawn in a way that makes even the narrator, Mad, feel a little underdeveloped by comparison. Rube, the trip’s initiator, is a sad, soft center — adrift and looking for something to tether himself to.
Tonally, this one strikes a balance between the chaotic charm of “Nothing to See Here” and the emotional weight of “Now Is Not the Time to Panic.” Some plot points don’t hold up under scrutiny — like a mom letting her preteen travel with strangers — but the emotional storytelling is strong enough to carry it. It’s funny without being silly, tender without tipping into sap.
The final act resists the urge for neat closure. They find their father — now living off-grid in California as a caretaker (and sperm donor) for heiress sisters — and the reunion is strained, awkward, unresolved. Wilson doesn’t romanticize it. The father isn’t redeemed or vilified. He’s just… a man who left. The siblings don’t get all the answers they want, but they get each other. That feels more honest.
Marin Ireland’s narration is mostly solid. Her Pepper and Tom are especially sharp, but Mad and Rube sometimes blur together. Still, no one delivers Wilson’s deadpan like she does.
In the end, this might be my favorite Wilson novel. It has a bit of everything: a neurotic gay man, an indifferent Millennial, a driven athlete, a precocious child, and a deadbeat dad. The oddball premise and deadpan delivery are perfectly balanced. None of it should work, but somehow it all comes together.
Rating (story): 4/5 stars
Rating (narration): 3/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: May 20 – May 23, 2025
Multi-tasking: Good to go. While the narration can make it hard to distinguish some characters at times, the story itself is easy to follow once you settle into its rhythm.
