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Runaway
From Erin Keane, editor in chief at Salon, comes a touching memoir about the search for truths in the stories families tell.
In 1970, Erin Keane’s mother ran away from home for the first time. She was thirteen years old. Over the next several years, and under two assumed identities, she hitchhiked her way across America, experiencing freedom, hardship, and tragedy. At fifteen, she met a man in New York City and married him. He was thirty-six.
Though a deft balance of journalistic digging, cultural criticism, and poetic reimagining, Keane pieces together the true story of her mother’s teenage years, questioning almost everything she’s been told about her parents and their relationship. Along the way, she also considers how pop culture has kept similar narratives alive in her. At stake are some of the most profound questions we can ask ourselves: What’s true? What gets remembered? Who gets to tell the stories that make us who we are?
Whether it’s talking about painful family history, #MeToo, Star Wars, true crime forensics, or The Gilmore Girls, Runaway is an unforgettable look at all the different ways the stories we tell—both personal and pop cultural—create us.
In 1970, Erin Keane’s mother ran away from home for the first time. She was thirteen years old. Over the next several years, and under two assumed identities, she hitchhiked her way across America, experiencing freedom, hardship, and tragedy. At fifteen, she met a man in New York City and married him. He was thirty-six.
Though a deft balance of journalistic digging, cultural criticism, and poetic reimagining, Keane pieces together the true story of her mother’s teenage years, questioning almost everything she’s been told about her parents and their relationship. Along the way, she also considers how pop culture has kept similar narratives alive in her. At stake are some of the most profound questions we can ask ourselves: What’s true? What gets remembered? Who gets to tell the stories that make us who we are?
Whether it’s talking about painful family history, #MeToo, Star Wars, true crime forensics, or The Gilmore Girls, Runaway is an unforgettable look at all the different ways the stories we tell—both personal and pop cultural—create us.
250 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 27, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
September 30, 2022
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Memories are, by definition, the things that form us, the things we re-member our selves from. A memoir descends to us from French, mémoire, which can mean:
...as well as the sense Anglophones use it in; it's a word, in other words, for lots of things that mean "parts of a whole thing, or place to put those parts." Memories are like that, bits of a whole thing that often, when reassembled, aren't the thing itself. We can bless the French for allowing us the use of this multi-warheaded weapon of a word for reifying the brain's peculiar technology of making meaning from the electromagnetic stew we all swim in. Some of us more successfully than others, as Author Keane's researches into her family have vividly taught her.
Had Author Keane's memoir, in any of those senses, of her life in pop-cultural mythic tones appeared two or even three years ago, it would be a triumph. As it is, it's a beautifully written memoir in the "store" or "report" sense, in the "place I've put fragments and pieces of things I want to remember and keep in some meaningful context." What it isn't is a successful book.
You can take it from me that the author's chops as a phrase-smith are solid, impeccably pointed sentences darted into the hides of slow-moving shambolic man-things that ruined the lives of her mother, then her, with their thoughtless trampling solipsism. It's not the least bit arguable that this is a writer, and a journalist, of talent and training, of tenacity and fascinating insight.
When she's talking about her mother, and her seriously screwed-up life.
When she tries to connect this with her pop-culture fascinations, clearly re-evaluated in adulthood after #MeToo blew the blinders off the unwilling-to-see and forced them to look, look, at the cost their pretty little fantasy exacted. On everyone, really, since a damaged person does damage, too; but inarguably on women the most tellingly, the most vilely.
What I can't make work in reading the piercingly honest redefinition of the author's life is why the John Ford/Woody Allen/et alii men are there. Yes, we know, they were ghastly people and treated women as playthings, they baked that attitude into their art, but...we know this. It's part of your mental furniture? Mine too. I swallowed it whole (though I never warmed to Woody Allen, too nebbishy for me). So did a few billion others. But you're talking about these men as though the betrayal of trust is fresh, without telling me why it *is* fresh for you, or putting into a time-context that would explain your palpable sense of betrayal.
Some wounds aren't best explored too often because the sympathy of the audience goes from victim to monster. This is a tipping point to be avoided at all costs with the #MeToo men. Keep beating the drum, and it will reverberate on you more strongly than the intended audience.
Anyway...very much a book of halves, one half excellent and the other...not.
My Review: Memories are, by definition, the things that form us, the things we re-member our selves from. A memoir descends to us from French, mémoire, which can mean:
memory: "the ability to retain information or a representation of past experience, based on the mental processes of learning or encoding, retention across some interval of time, and retrieval or reactivation of the memory" (APA Dictionary of Psychology)
memorandum: "a short note designating something to be remembered, especially something to be done or acted upon in the future; reminder" (dictionary.com)
store: "something that is stored or kept for future use. articles (as of food) accumulated for some specific object and drawn upon as needed : stock, supplies. something that is accumulated. a source from which things may be drawn as needed : a reserve fund" (Merriam-Webster)
mind: "broadly, all intellectual and psychological phenomena of an organism, encompassing motivational, affective, behavioral, perceptual, and cognitive systems; that is, the organized totality of an organism's mental and psychic processes and the structural and functional cognitive components on which they depend" (APA Dictionary of Psychology)
remembrance: "the act of remembering and showing respect for someone who has died or a past event" and/or "a memory of something that happened in the past" (Cambridge Dictionary)
dissertation: "a written essay, treatise, or disquisition" with special reference to scholarly use (Wordnik)
report: "an account or statement describing in detail an event, situation, or the like, usually as the result of observation, inquiry, etc." (dictionary.com)
...as well as the sense Anglophones use it in; it's a word, in other words, for lots of things that mean "parts of a whole thing, or place to put those parts." Memories are like that, bits of a whole thing that often, when reassembled, aren't the thing itself. We can bless the French for allowing us the use of this multi-warheaded weapon of a word for reifying the brain's peculiar technology of making meaning from the electromagnetic stew we all swim in. Some of us more successfully than others, as Author Keane's researches into her family have vividly taught her.
Had Author Keane's memoir, in any of those senses, of her life in pop-cultural mythic tones appeared two or even three years ago, it would be a triumph. As it is, it's a beautifully written memoir in the "store" or "report" sense, in the "place I've put fragments and pieces of things I want to remember and keep in some meaningful context." What it isn't is a successful book.
You can take it from me that the author's chops as a phrase-smith are solid, impeccably pointed sentences darted into the hides of slow-moving shambolic man-things that ruined the lives of her mother, then her, with their thoughtless trampling solipsism. It's not the least bit arguable that this is a writer, and a journalist, of talent and training, of tenacity and fascinating insight.
When she's talking about her mother, and her seriously screwed-up life.
When she tries to connect this with her pop-culture fascinations, clearly re-evaluated in adulthood after #MeToo blew the blinders off the unwilling-to-see and forced them to look, look, at the cost their pretty little fantasy exacted. On everyone, really, since a damaged person does damage, too; but inarguably on women the most tellingly, the most vilely.
What I can't make work in reading the piercingly honest redefinition of the author's life is why the John Ford/Woody Allen/et alii men are there. Yes, we know, they were ghastly people and treated women as playthings, they baked that attitude into their art, but...we know this. It's part of your mental furniture? Mine too. I swallowed it whole (though I never warmed to Woody Allen, too nebbishy for me). So did a few billion others. But you're talking about these men as though the betrayal of trust is fresh, without telling me why it *is* fresh for you, or putting into a time-context that would explain your palpable sense of betrayal.
Some wounds aren't best explored too often because the sympathy of the audience goes from victim to monster. This is a tipping point to be avoided at all costs with the #MeToo men. Keep beating the drum, and it will reverberate on you more strongly than the intended audience.
Anyway...very much a book of halves, one half excellent and the other...not.
August 30, 2022
This book blends a lot of different aspects. It’s a book of internal questions about family and the self, a reckoning of family and culture - it’s memoir, in essays, about someone else. It doesn’t always connect, and maybe the threads could’ve been pulled a little bit more, at least committing to one aspect or style, but the writing is undoubtedly beautiful and thought provoking. For people that love more open ended narratives and memoirs that focus more on the thoughts of a life than the person’s life itself, this would be a great choice.
November 14, 2022
hmmmm I picked this up because I knew the author vaguely through the Louisville Moth scene. Otherwise I might not have read it, and I think overall it might appeal more to a Gen X audience. There's a lot of specific pop culture unpacking and references that I only somewhat got--a LOT of talk about how much she had loved Woody Allen's movies and felt betrayed by him being a creep, whereas I feel like in my lifetime I have pretty much always known he was a creep? But I can relate to being surprised by other pop culture creeps.
The stuff about her mom was like...I would have loved to have read a book from her mom's POV? But at the same time I enjoyed her journalistic attempts to investigate her own family. And like, you know that tweet that's like "Moms will be washing dishes and all of a sudden tell you the most depressing story you've ever heard"? Very that.
The stuff about her mom was like...I would have loved to have read a book from her mom's POV? But at the same time I enjoyed her journalistic attempts to investigate her own family. And like, you know that tweet that's like "Moms will be washing dishes and all of a sudden tell you the most depressing story you've ever heard"? Very that.
October 22, 2022
I found RUNAWAY: NOTES ON THE MYTHS THAT MADE ME by Erin Keane a terrific read. A set of essays written around Keane’s family lore, she sorts out fact from fiction as best she can through thorough research of her parents’ pasts. I was pulled from one sentence to the next by Keane’s writing. Not only is the language lyrical, but Keane, a poet, makes the sort of connections we expect in poetry, easily moving from one seemingly disconnected topic to the next in a way that pulls it all together in the end. I wanted to keep reading to see what curves the story would take next, what surprising topic would be tackled next. Tackling the thorny topic of #MeToo and other dissimilar topics, such as Star Wars, true crime forensics, or The Gilmore Girls, Keane truly dissects “the myths that made” her. These are meticulously researched essays written by a careful journalist. I was drawn in from the beginning and couldn’t put it down.
October 5, 2022
I couldn’t put this down. The story of Keane’s mother has the adventure—ok, yes, the middle class voyeurism—of The Glass Castle and Educated, but the perspective of a critic. Less pathos, more feminism. I do think that at times it falls prey to the ouroboros of overshadowing women by critiquing men for centering themselves, but that’s a fine line that is difficult to avoid crossing. As a researcher and scholar, I was particularly taken by the insight about how the practice of corroborating facts is patriarchal, in how invested it is in the truth of male authority and institutions. Something to continue thinking about. It probably could have gone deeper on that point, actually—a counter argument is that corroboration is also an act of calling BS on entitlement to fact/truth. Well, clearly a thought provoking text, candy coated in a very compelling story.
September 29, 2022
To revisit your family narrative and examine its honesty is an act of bravery. To write it in such beautiful and insightful language is artistry. To throw in a dazzling burn at Dean from the LM Montgomery series and bring your memoir full circle is *chef’s kiss*. Congrats to Ms. Keane on her memoir. Well worth the pre-order wait.
October 19, 2022
This seemed more like a biography of the author’s mother than a memoir. However it is a fascinating and well documented account of a teenage runaway and her family. The pop culture commentary was somewhat distracting but she drew me in with the discussion of Woody Allen, as I too struggle with how to separate the artist from the work.
April 10, 2023
Not what I expected
I didn’t like this book. I had read the blurb about it, and I follow the author on Twitter and it sounded interesting because of the story of her mom, but then I got a master’s thesis on the movie “Manhattan,” comparisons to Star Wars (?), and a bunch of opinions about “Double Fantasy.” I feel bad because I wanted to like it but I was frustrated every time I picked it up. I skipped over so much of the movie and music stuff that I felt kind of cheated. Anyway, if you read this Erin, I’m sorry.
I didn’t like this book. I had read the blurb about it, and I follow the author on Twitter and it sounded interesting because of the story of her mom, but then I got a master’s thesis on the movie “Manhattan,” comparisons to Star Wars (?), and a bunch of opinions about “Double Fantasy.” I feel bad because I wanted to like it but I was frustrated every time I picked it up. I skipped over so much of the movie and music stuff that I felt kind of cheated. Anyway, if you read this Erin, I’m sorry.
January 23, 2023
A family memoir so fine I read it straight through in an afternoon.
December 25, 2022
I devoured this book and thought about how there is a whole generation of us who remember being able to disappear, to become someone else who had a different life in a different city just by conjuring it up… and we were believed without question that we are the room we are in. I think about how people today don’t have that mobility, that the artifacts and fragments of their past follows them everywhere, from a birth certificate to a SSN to relationships that won’t let them escape… social media and algorithms, software in the phone you are reading this on tracking every movement we all make, ready to expose our lies we tell ourselves about who we are, who we were, never letting us forget the truth hard facts reveal… sometimes the kindest thing is to allow someone to be who they want to be, the more kind versions of themselves… to bury the violence, hunger and pain they endured to be the person who stands before you, whose eyes you mistake for wisdom that is just merely a marker of survival.
I wonder about the generations we are leaving who will never experience the possibility of becoming someone else… this book will haunt me for a very long time, but in the kindest cruelty. @beltpub #books #indiepublishing (puppy included for juice… puppy pics always go well 🐾🐶😁 ) #dogwalkblog #dogsofinstagram #zoey
I wonder about the generations we are leaving who will never experience the possibility of becoming someone else… this book will haunt me for a very long time, but in the kindest cruelty. @beltpub #books #indiepublishing (puppy included for juice… puppy pics always go well 🐾🐶😁 ) #dogwalkblog #dogsofinstagram #zoey
May 13, 2022
Thanks NetGalley and Belt Publishing for this e-ARC.
Erin Keane's memoir on finding out the truths in her family is one that is interesting. Generally, memoirs focus slightly more on the individuals that write them. In this case, Keane's memoir focuses a lot more on her mother, who was a runaway. I appreciated that she took pains to make contact with organisations and people who could help her connect the dots. It mustn't have been easy, and the work she's put in to this memoir is a testament of her professionalism.
I found the cultural commentary a bit off. Thematically, they were on track and totally in sync with her mother's history. However, it felt very divorced from the narrative at times. It didn't feel very much like a memoir rather than a biography of her parents, so I think calling it a "memoir" feels very much like a misnomer. I wish there were less commentary and more family history.
Erin Keane's memoir on finding out the truths in her family is one that is interesting. Generally, memoirs focus slightly more on the individuals that write them. In this case, Keane's memoir focuses a lot more on her mother, who was a runaway. I appreciated that she took pains to make contact with organisations and people who could help her connect the dots. It mustn't have been easy, and the work she's put in to this memoir is a testament of her professionalism.
I found the cultural commentary a bit off. Thematically, they were on track and totally in sync with her mother's history. However, it felt very divorced from the narrative at times. It didn't feel very much like a memoir rather than a biography of her parents, so I think calling it a "memoir" feels very much like a misnomer. I wish there were less commentary and more family history.
October 24, 2022
Really really loved this memoir, great pacing and so many honest and astute observations, loved the intergration of pop culture into her own personal history myth busting, so good, I highlighted several passages in my copy. Great read, highly recommend! 5/5 #bookstagram #bookclub
December 27, 2022
Erin Keane is the smartest writer I’ve read. I adored this book, particularly how she brought in cultural references and criticisms to help us (and her) relate to her own family history. Beautiful read. Buy it now!
October 16, 2023
I was riveted by this memoir and kept comparing my teenage years to Keane's mother's experience, thinking now there was one wild girl--wilder and braver than I had been. I left home at age 15. My parents didn't protect me. either. But while Keane's mom was a military brat with strict parents who didn't protect their daughter, my parents were the opposite--liberal beatniks who didn't have any backbone at all and let me and my siblings run wild.
I loved how Keane profiled cultural icons of her childhood, like Woody Allen and his film Manhattan, to mirror her mom's experience and her own fascination with the film as a child, looking for understanding of her mother's history. Keane does her mom a favor, examining her mother's life, deconstructing it to make sense out of what happened, and why.
I revealed my teen years to my teenage daughter when she was fourteen--the same year I was when I became involved with an older man. She was in shock, listening quietly, asking questions. I wanted her to know who I was, where she came from, why I mothered her the way I did, wanting to protect her, and yet not smother her.
Keane asks her mom for this same kind of information and verifies the stories she hears by investigating facts such as criminal records and court cases. The result is a wild ride through the early 1970s, profiling what happened to many of our country's homeless teens back then. Sadly, the story continues as hundreds of thousands of parents today fail to accept and protect their children.
I loved how Keane profiled cultural icons of her childhood, like Woody Allen and his film Manhattan, to mirror her mom's experience and her own fascination with the film as a child, looking for understanding of her mother's history. Keane does her mom a favor, examining her mother's life, deconstructing it to make sense out of what happened, and why.
I revealed my teen years to my teenage daughter when she was fourteen--the same year I was when I became involved with an older man. She was in shock, listening quietly, asking questions. I wanted her to know who I was, where she came from, why I mothered her the way I did, wanting to protect her, and yet not smother her.
Keane asks her mom for this same kind of information and verifies the stories she hears by investigating facts such as criminal records and court cases. The result is a wild ride through the early 1970s, profiling what happened to many of our country's homeless teens back then. Sadly, the story continues as hundreds of thousands of parents today fail to accept and protect their children.
May 31, 2023
I am not sure if the rambling master's thesis on pop culture was added because it thematically tied to the story of her mother running away as a teen in 1970, or if her publisher asked her to pad the length of the memoir. Maybe it is both! The story of discovering who your parents really were was certainly interesting and engaging (for the most part. It's pretty repetitive). All the deep dives into movies I haven't seen (Manhattan), tv shows I didn't remember (Gilmore Girls), or music I don't care about (Yoko Ono & John Lennon) were a bit unnecessary. Keane tied the pop culture discussions into the main narrative well enough, but the asides felt too long for what they added.
It was an easy listen and 1970 sounds like an alien planet with all the kids fleeing their parents and living by their wits on the streets. I guess I was expecting more introspection by Keane's mother as she told her story, but what we got was certainly fine.
It was an easy listen and 1970 sounds like an alien planet with all the kids fleeing their parents and living by their wits on the streets. I guess I was expecting more introspection by Keane's mother as she told her story, but what we got was certainly fine.
July 4, 2023
One of my favorite sentences comes toward the very end on p 187. The defensiveness of the men caught up in #metoo. " The implication is that having to interrupt our own pleasure to treat a woman as fully human is an irritating inconvenience. " So very well said!!
I somehow expected this book to be more memoir less biography, but yet, those were some interesting parents!! Mother is resilient, to say the least. Sorting through her father's stories, was fascinating as well.
And still, the patriarchy continues to rule our "insignificant lives" unfortunately beating back any progress we had made as women as I sadly watch our bodies not being our own. We seem to be heading backward.
I somehow expected this book to be more memoir less biography, but yet, those were some interesting parents!! Mother is resilient, to say the least. Sorting through her father's stories, was fascinating as well.
And still, the patriarchy continues to rule our "insignificant lives" unfortunately beating back any progress we had made as women as I sadly watch our bodies not being our own. We seem to be heading backward.
August 14, 2022
Part-memoir, part cultural commentary, Runaway by Erin Keane is filled with gripping stories about her mother’s life as a teen runaway in the 1970s and how this shaped her family. With deft prose, Keane seamlessly moves between her mother’s incredible (and at times, harrowing) stories and critique of how pop culture shapes us and determines whose stories are worth telling. This book will make you wonder about your own family, which of their stories are passed down and why. An engaging, thought-provoking read that’s perfect for those who love memoirs as well as those who usually shy away from the genre.
June 29, 2023
In this memoir, Louisville’s own Erin Keane examines the story of how her 36-year-old father met her 15-year-old runaway mother in New York City and married her, even after he learned her real age. Her father died when she was young, and growing up, she valorized this story—not only because she missed her father, but because society has valorized stories like it for years, until recently. It is very hard to rewrite the stories you’ve told yourself about your family and consider them in a larger cultural context. Keane does it with aplomb.
This review was originally published on my blog.
This review was originally published on my blog.
February 14, 2024
As a memoir writer myself—one obsessed with the stories we’ve been raised on—I loved this book. Runaway is a gorgeously constructed memoir, investigating and interrogating the stories families tell—and the ways we go on to tell them to ourselves. Erin Keane’s ability to locate the precise points where pop culture and her family’s mythology converge and then explore those intersections with poetic grace and serious journalistic chops makes for a phenomenal read.
July 4, 2024
Erin Keane takes on a writing assignment to tell her family narrative through pop culture parallels. Her father is many years older than her mother and they met when she was underage. Just like in Woody Allen's Manhattan. No wonder Keane was so keen on the film as a child.
Her mother has a harrowing story. Runaway at a young age in a time where tracking was sketchy at best. I enjoyed the introduction to a foreign concept in my backyard, but I wasn't transfixed.
Her mother has a harrowing story. Runaway at a young age in a time where tracking was sketchy at best. I enjoyed the introduction to a foreign concept in my backyard, but I wasn't transfixed.
March 30, 2023
This is a book not just about Erin and her parents, but about the expections we have for women and men. It’s about inspecting the stories/lies our families tell us, and we tell them in return; which ones do we allow ourselves to believe and why - and when do we change our minds? I’ll be thinking about this book for a while.
December 9, 2022
3.5 stars. I was intrigued by the story of the author's mother being a runaway around 1970, and that story was soundly delivered. I thought there was too much other writing, though (some context, some self-ramblings).
December 21, 2022
Phenomenal writer and story teller Erin Keane has shown herself to be! I enjoyed this collection so much. I felt as if Keane let us in on truths that were founded in herself. I have it 4 stars because it felt a tad repetitive, but I truly enjoyed it.
January 22, 2023
In doing the hard work to research and tell her mother's own story, Keane brilliantly ruminates on the gendered line of whose stories have been celebrated and legendized and whose suppressed and discarded deep into the heart of our culture.
December 15, 2022
4.5 stars
I really enjoyed reading this one.
I really enjoyed reading this one.
January 7, 2023
A 2022 staff favorite recommended by Natalie. Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore...
July 18, 2023
This one blew me away! It’s an incredible book.
February 13, 2025
Unfocused.
November 24, 2022
Perhaps because some of the poeticizing doesn't take me: "I studied the court transcript of my father...like a monk with an illuminated scroll," or, that in the first 47 pages she mentions the age discrepancy between her parents dozens of times (I am not exaggerating), I am having trouble falling into this one. The part I like most, so far, is the very beginning, which includes a detailed takedown of Woody Allen's "Manhattan." That section rates 5 stars. But, overall, at page 40 I've started skimming....
A few pages after a sentence that begins (by way of explaining her mother's behavior as a young teen), "Like any thirteen year old..," there is this sentence: "There is no more stubborn creature on Earth than a seventh-grade girl" (again, explaining her mother's behavior at that age). These generalizations--and repeated ones at that--are not compelling me to read in detail.
A few pages after a sentence that begins (by way of explaining her mother's behavior as a young teen), "Like any thirteen year old..," there is this sentence: "There is no more stubborn creature on Earth than a seventh-grade girl" (again, explaining her mother's behavior at that age). These generalizations--and repeated ones at that--are not compelling me to read in detail.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews