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"Rabbit Run" shows a young man who's trapped by the demands of his family and his community. But John Updike creates an entire world for his 26-year-old hero, delivering a message about fulfillment, despair, and hope - by showing some unexpected actions, and the secret inner thoughts that led to them.

The "Rabbit" of the title is Harry Angstrom, a former star on the high school's basketball team who's now married his girlfriend Janice. Harry has an ordinary job selling kitchen supplies in an economically depressed town in Pennsylvania. The book opens with Harry reaching his breaking point - driving his car, he refuses to go home. He drives out of town. He tries to escape his old life. He runs.

But what is there for the hero then? His pregnant wife and two-year-old son still weigh on his mind, and there's no easy answer for how to fix his life. He returns to town, seeking advice and direction from his high school basketball coach. He shares his feelings with his family's minister. He has a fling with a local call girl.

Updike tells his story in a "naturalist" style, where the everyday details of the small town of Brewer add to Harry's sense of spiritual loss. The entire novel is narrated in the present tense, as though each moment has just occurred. ("That his touch still lives in his hands elates him. He feels liberated from long gloom.") As Harry faces his crisis, the world rushing around him starts to seem indifferent. ("The commercial shows the seven segments of a Tootsie Roll coming out of the wrapper and turning into the seven letters of 'Tootsie.' They, too, sing and dance...") And while the book's first paragraphs describe him joining a high school student's game of pick-up basketball , the subtext is clearly Harry's memories of past glory, and his uneasiness with his current life.

His abandonment is unforgivable - but Updike fairly represents Harry's dilemma, noting that his desperate emotions are genuine. He records Harry's reactions to the town's predictable responses - Janice persuades Harry to return home, her father gets him a job at his car dealership. The book realistically leads Harry through the aftermath of his desperate situation. Harry isn't able to magically resolve the tensions, and then his family faces even more crisis.

There's a horrifying scene involving the death of an infant, and the awful weight of a funeral. But Harry confronts this scene like every other, still baffled by the lack of a clear salvation. Even the local minister struggles to find the right advice to offer. What will happen after Harry chooses not to run? Life never offers a simple answer, and the tone of Updike's novel suggests that it won't be easy.

Updike found the character so rich that he wrote a series of sequels following Harry through his life. For the next forty years, Updike wrote one sequel each decade, revisiting the character in 1971, 1981, 1990, and 2001. It's a remarkable achievement, and the second and third sequels each won a Pulitzer Prize. Updike was 71 when he finally wrote "Rabbit, Remembered" - but this first novel, which he wrote at age 29, is where the path begins.

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