Run: A Novel

A mysterious aurora event transforms ordinary Americans into homicidal zealots, plunging the nation into an apocalyptic nightmare where neighbors turn against neighbors with axes and guns. Jack Colclough, his wife Dee, and their two children—teenage Naomi and seven-year-old Cole—flee their Albuquerque home when they hear their address broadcast as a target on the radio. What follows is a harrowing odyssey across a landscape where civilization has collapsed overnight, and the very people who once represented safety and order have become instruments of systematic violence. The family's desperate flight northward toward the Canadian border becomes a test of endurance that strips away every comfort of their former middle-class existence.

Their journey transforms from a simple evacuation into an epic survival story as they traverse the unforgiving terrain of the American West. When their vehicle breaks down in the Colorado mountains, the Colcloughs discover temporary sanctuary in an abandoned cabin, where Jack must learn to hunt and fish while Dee tends to his injuries from increasingly violent encounters. Yet even this refuge proves temporary when armed intruders discover their hideout, forcing the family into the wilderness with minimal supplies. The subsequent trek through the Wind River Mountains becomes a crucible of physical and psychological endurance, pushing each family member to their breaking point as hunger, altitude sickness, and exposure take their toll.

Separation becomes the family's greatest fear realized when Jack is captured by military forces at a mountain pass, leaving Dee alone to shepherd their children through a world where even supposed rescue operations have been corrupted by the aurora's influence. Jack's imprisonment in a cattle car bound for mass execution parallels Dee's desperate attempts to find sanctuary for Naomi and Cole, leading her to a fortified compound that promises safety but delivers only another form of captivity. Both parents must navigate the thin line between trust and suspicion, as the aurora's effects have made it impossible to distinguish between genuine helpers and those who would exploit their vulnerability.

The novel's climactic movement toward the Canadian border brings the family back together through a series of increasingly desperate gambles, each requiring tremendous sacrifice. Their reunion in the ruins of Great Falls—Jack's former hometown—becomes both a moment of profound relief and the launching point for their final, most perilous push toward freedom. As military forces close in and Dee suffers a potentially fatal injury, the family's survival depends on split-second decisions that test the very bonds that have held them together throughout their ordeal.

Crouch crafts a meditation on the fragility of civilization and the primal power of family loyalty under extreme duress. The aurora serves as more than a plot device; it becomes a lens through which to examine how quickly social order can dissolve and how ordinary people can be transformed into instruments of violence. Yet the novel's true power lies in its unflinching portrayal of parental love as both burden and salvation—the way Jack and Dee's determination to protect their children becomes simultaneously their greatest strength and their most vulnerable point. The story's nineteen-year epilogue, revealing Naomi as an archaeologist excavating the mass grave where her father nearly died, suggests that survival is only the beginning of reckoning with trauma, and that understanding the past requires confronting its most horrific truths.