Not enough books are written about siblings. Kevin Wilson has noticed.
The Tennessee novelist put a brother and sister at the center of his debut, “The Family Fang,” and siblings also figured prominently in “Nothing to See Here” (in which those siblings sometimes spontaneously combusted) and “Perfect Little World” (set in a commune, where almost everyone felt like sisters and brothers). Sibs are back in his latest, and sweetest, novel, “Run for the Hills,” although it opens with an only child.
She’s Madeline “Mad” Hill, who runs an organic farm with her mother in Coalfield, Tenn., the same fictional town where Wilson’s “Now Is Not the Time to Panic” was set. One day, a stranger pulls up in a PT Cruiser to inform Mad that: a. he’s her half-brother; b. his father Charles abandoned him to move to Tennessee, father Mad and then abandon her and her mom and c. that same father went on to create and abandon at least two other families. Soon, Mad is joining brother Rube Hill on a road trip to collect their previously unknown siblings and give their long-lost dad what-for.
As usual, Wilson’s writing is funny in a way that hurts just a little, as in this observation: “Mad figured that most therapy consisted of focusing on how your parents messed you up, and then finding ways to keep that pain contained within your body so you didn’t pass it on or yell too much at the people responsible.”
In “Run for the Hills,” Wilson leans harder into the sentimental bits that have always lurked behind his anarchic plot devices such as those spontaneously combusting children or the parents in “Family Fang,” performance artists who often abandoned their kids (another motif Wilson returns to often) or played tricks on them in the name of art.
There’s nothing so extreme in “Run for the Hills,” which may disappoint Wilson fans, but what it lacks in weird it makes up in heart. Rube, Mad and the siblings they find, Pep and Tom (their father likes nicknames), are each memorable in distinctive ways. Each has something to learn about sibling connections — all, after all, were solo children who were raised by single mothers — but, beyond some surface crabbiness or road trip hangryness, they are a kind bunch, eager to learn from each other. Even when they finally encounter their deadbeat dad, they’re oddly decent to him.
The siblings are tall like their dad, and “Run for the Hills” is partly about what children inherit from their parents. But as the Hills get to know each other, the focus shifts from nature to nurture. Each of the offspring has learned something important from their father, from Pep’s basketball skills to Mad’s gift for growing things to Rube’s skill as a mystery writer. But all have surpassed their jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none dad.
In the end, the book says we learn a lot from our parents, but we can choose to ignore some lessons they teach us as we create our own stories — especially if the lessons are, like Charles’ repeated disappearances, cruel. Rube, for instance, taught himself to write by reading, and improving upon, his dad’s books. As he wonders why his dad abandoned him, Rube thinks about his self-taught writing but also about the family he hopes to meet:
