Chasing the Falconers

On the Run is a middle grade adventure series by Gordon Korman comprised of six short adventure books. Each book builds on the conclusion of the previous one, resulting in a third-act conclusion in the final installment. The setting in the On the Run series is the entire United States, with the Falconer children crisscrossing the nation by train, car, bus, boat, and foot. The first book, Chasing the Falconers, begins in rural Nebraska and follows Aiden, Meg, and Miguel as they travel by train to Chicago and then by car through the Midwest to New Jersey, New York, and Vermont. In later books, the siblings travel to Boston, Los Angeles, Denver, Montana, and other states before eventually reuniting with their parents, who were incarcerated in Florida. In each state, the setting morphs appropriately. In Nebraska, their farm boasts “a modest cornfield and a few acres of soybeans” (2). In Illinois, “the Chicago grid hid[es] them all the way to the Indiana border” (97). In New Jersey, they encounter “endless tracts of long, narrow houses stacked close together like dominos” (111). While in Vermont, they enter a regionally characteristic white house with red shutters near a dock. The specificity of the settings makes the books particularly vivid, emphasizing the connection between the fictional America of the Falconers and the readers’ real-world experience.

Radio and television are the primary conduits for the transmission of information in the series. Aiden learns of his parents’ arrest through a midday news broadcast at school when a classmate calls out, “Dude, your house is on TV” (9). He stands in the school’s media center and watches his house under siege and his parents being hauled away in handcuffs. Later, in a remote Nebraska gas station, the mechanic is suspicious of Aiden and Meg after a radio news broadcast announces that “authorities continue to search south-central Nebraska” for runaways (49). This tips off the attendant, who calls in the children to authorities. When the siblings are driving across the country with Miguel, a report comes on the SUV’s radio that identifies Aiden and Meg as the “children of convicted traitors John and Louise Falconer” (106)—a revelation that forces them to have a difficult conversation with Miguel, who knew them under an alias.

Chasing the Falconers follows Aiden and Meg as they escape from juvenile detention in hopes of proving that their incarcerated parents are innocent. They are hunted by the FBI, juvenile detention authorities, and local police as they search for the CIA agent, Frank Lindenauer, who recruited their parents. By the novel’s conclusion, an assassin named Hairless Joe is also hunting the children.

The Fugitive Factor, the second book in the series, follows the siblings to Boston, where they find Lindenauer’s girlfriend, Jane. They believe that Lindenauer can exonerate their parents, and Jane is their means of finding him. At this point, the whole country is searching for the missing Falconers, including Hairless Joe. Instead of helping, Jane calls the police, and Meg is caught and incarcerated, only to be freed by Aiden at the novel’s end.

The third novel, Now You See Them, Now You Don’t, takes Aiden and Meg to Los Angeles, where they are hunted by Hairless Joe. When the children find a poster featuring Lindenauer’s image, they come out of hiding only to learn that it was a trap. They escape, more convinced than ever that someone wants the truth about their parents kept quiet at any cost.

The Stowaway Solution, the fourth book, picks up where the third concluded. In Los Angeles, Aiden and Meg hide from the police and Hairless Joe on a ship, escaping later on a raft. Meanwhile, an FBI agent who has been hunting them captures Aiden, and Meg has to perform a daring rescue.

In Public Enemies, the fifth book, the siblings travel to Denver in search of HORUS, a secret organization affiliated with terrorist groups—and Lindenauer’s true employer. By now, they are infamous, and their faces have been broadcast on television and printed in newspapers, making it difficult to move across the US. They learn that Hairless Joe is actually Lindenauer in disguise, intent on concealing the Falconers’ innocence.

In the final book, Hunting the Hunter, the Falconer siblings attempt to capture Hairless Joe, or Lindenauer, and free their parents from prison. Aiden and Meg both risk their lives in the pursuit of justice for their parents, ultimately finding success through their perseverance.