These 4 People Had Never Met. Now They’re on a Road Trip to Find Dad.

In Kevin Wilson’s novel “Run for the Hills,” half siblings drive cross-country searching for the father who abandoned them.

By Brandon Finger

When people speak of “found” family, they tend to mean those closest to them who are not related by blood or by law. One might hear the phrase used by a queer person who has found love and acceptance far, far away from their parents, or a member of a church who finds more treasured community through worship than they can at home. But in “Run for the Hills,” Kevin Wilson’s latest novel, the term can be deployed more literally. If a man sets out on a cross-country road trip to find all of his half siblings and the father who abandoned them one by one, what have they all done if not … found family?

Wilson, whose past novels include “Perfect Little World” and “Nothing to See Here,” is known for his idiosyncratic, at times fantastical family stories, but “Run for the Hills” is something a little more straightforward. It begins in Tennessee, where 32-year-old Madeline “Mad” Hill operates a successful organic farm with her mother. One Saturday in March, a 44-year-old writer named Reuben “Rube” Hill arrives from Boston with some shocking news: He is her half sibling, and she has two more, their father having abandoned Rube, and then Mad, and then two more families after that. He invites her on a road trip to meet and collect the others so the four of them can confront their father together in California, where Rube believes he currently resides.

Mad has never thought to search for her father, let alone had the time to. “He left,” she tells Rube. “He didn’t want to stay. He doesn’t deserve my thinking of him.” But after decades of keeping him out of her mind, the seed planted by her half brother sprouts in a near instant, and she accepts his bizarre offer. Before long, they’re off into the American West at lightning speed — or, as fast as his rented PT cruiser is able to go. Read the full review at The New York Times.