RUN

RUN

ANN PATCHETT

‘Expect miracles when you read Ann Patchett’s fiction’ – NEW YORK TIMES.
Author of the bestselling Bel Canto.

It is just a few weeks after Christmas, and the unforgiving New England weather has taken a turn for the worse. Doyle has dragged his reluctant sons Tip and Teddy, to a speech by Jesse Jackson. Though his own political career is over, dealt a fatal blow by a family scandal, Doyle is still fired by Jackson’s rhetoric and perplexed by his sons’ indifference.

The two boys, both adopted, are close enough in age to be taken for twins, but in character they couldn’t be more different. Teddy – open, affectionate, the gentle dreamer. The older by a year, Tip is more serious, reserving his own passionate interest for ichthyology: he is happiest alone in the warmth of his lab labeling and categorizing fish specimens.

When they are involved in a violent accident on the treacherously icy road, the Doyle’s are forced for the first time to confront certain truths: about how the death of Bernadette, Doyle’s beloved wife, has affected the family, and about the anonymous figure, never discussed, who is the boys’ real mother.

Full warmth and humanity and singing, graceful prose, Run is a moving story about overlapping lives, our fragile hopes and fears for our children, and the lengths to which we’ll go to protect our families. It is a stunning novel from the prizewinning author of Bel Canto.