Runaway: Stories

Runaway: Stories (2004) by Alice Munro is a collection of eight short stories that explore the inner lives of women caught between desire and duty, leading to personal transformation. A winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Munro was famous for the short story form. Many of the stories were published in magazines such as The New Yorker before being published in this collection. The recurring presence of abuse, however, received context following the posthumous revelation about Munro’s own involvement in the abuse of her daughter.

This guide references the 2004 Borzoi Books edition of the book.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, death by suicide, child death, termination of pregnancy, sexual violence, emotional abuse, mental illness, and addiction.

Plot Summaries

Runaway is a collection of eight short stories. Of these eight stories, “Chance,” “Soon,” and “Silence” form a loose trilogy that focuses on a recurring character.

In “Runaway,” Carla is a young woman who lives with her husband, Clark, on a small rural farm. His controlling and manipulative behavior strains the marriage, and Carla feels trapped and diminished. Once hopeful about their life together, she now tends horses while struggling with fear and dependence, unable to imagine a future outside Clark’s dominance. Adding to her distress, her beloved goat, Flora, is missing. Carla briefly connects with Sylvia Jamieson, a widowed older neighbor who senses her unhappiness and encourages her to leave. With Sylvia’s support, Carla leaves but, while riding the bus to Toronto, changes her mind. After Carla returns, Clark confronts Sylvie. Their confrontation ends with Flora’s reappearance. Sylvie moves away, but (in a final letter to Carla) mentions Flora’s return. Carla is shocked, as Clark said nothing to her about the goat. She wanders through the local woods, wondering what Clark might have done to Flora.

In “Chance,” Juliet is a young woman traveling by train across Canada in the 1960s. A classics scholar, Juliet is intelligent and independent, yet uncertain about her future. On the journey, she meets Eric, a rugged man whose openness and attraction draw her into an unexpected intimacy. When a man seemingly throws himself in front of the train, thus dying by suicide, Juliet finds comfort in Eric’s presence as he assures her that her brief rudeness to the man wasn’t the reason for his death. Months later, Juliet decides to reconnect with Eric. She learns that his wife, who had a longstanding medical condition, recently died. When she arrives in the small coastal town where Eric lives, the funeral has taken place. Juliet is taken to Eric’s empty house, where she waits for him. After a night in Eric’s house, she realizes that his life is much more complex and nuanced than she imagined. As she thinks about leaving, Eric returns and is pleased to see Juliet in his house.

“Soon” continues the story of Juliet, now a young mother traveling with her baby daughter, Penelope, to visit her parents after several years away. Living with her partner, Eric, in a remote coastal town, Juliet feels distanced from her past and uncertain about her present. Visiting her parents brings her back to the conservative, quietly repressive atmosphere of her childhood home: Her mother is both warm and emotionally fragile, while her father remains practical and somewhat detached. During the stay, Juliet becomes aware of her mother’s declining health and the quiet sacrifices that have defined her life.

“Silence” concludes the sequence of stories about Juliet, now middle-aged and living alone. The story centers on her estranged relationship with her daughter, Penelope. Penelope cuts off all contact, leaving Juliet devastated and bewildered. Letters and attempts at communication go unanswered; Grappling with the painful absence, Juliet learns indirectly that Penelope has joined a spiritual retreat and chosen to live apart from her past. This knowledge brings little comfort, as the silence between them remains. The story shifts from Juliet’s initial hope for reconciliation to her acceptance that her daughter may never return.

In “Passion,” Grace is a young woman from a modest background who spends a summer with the Travers family, relatives of her fiancé, Maury. Grace feels out of place among the Traverses’ comfortable, cultured lifestyle. Rather than the dull Maury, Grace is drawn instead to Neil, Maury’s older stepbrother, a restless and reckless doctor whose intensity sharply contrasts with Maury’s steadiness. One day, Neil takes Grace to the hospital to treat a wound. Their excursion exposes her to his cynical worldview, alcohol addiction, and sense of dissatisfaction. Grace is both disturbed and fascinated, sensing in Neil a depth and honesty absent from her relationship with Maury. Neil dies young in a car accident, while Grace ends her engagement to Maury. Later in life, she revisits the Travers family home and recalls how they gave her a large sum of money to not speak about Neil’s alcohol addiction, a sum that set her up for the rest of her life.

In “Trespasses,” Lauren, a sensitive young girl, moves with her parents, Eileen and Harry, to a small Canadian town. Lauren feels slightly out of place, often sensing an emotional distance between herself and her parents. This uncertainty deepens when she befriends Delphine, a mysterious older woman who works at a local hotel. Delphine takes a keen interest in Lauren, inviting her into her apartment and offering her attention and stories. Lauren enjoys the companionship but feels uneasy, as something about Delphine’s intensity is unsettling. When Delphine suggests that Lauren may be her biological daughter, the girl is thrown into confusion, unsure of who she really is or whether her parents hid the truth from her. Although the claim proves untrue, the encounter leaves Lauren shaken. She begins to view her parents with new, questioning eyes. After her parents fight, they reveal the truth: They adopted Delphine’s daughter when they believed that they couldn’t have children. After becoming unexpectedly pregnant, the anxious Eileen was involved in a car accident in which the adopted child died. When Eileen gave birth to a baby girl, they named her Lauren, the same name as the deceased adopted child. With Delphine, they lay the cremated remains of the dead child to rest.

In “Tricks,” Robin is a lonely young woman who lives in a small Ontario town with her sick sister. Each year, she takes a solitary trip to Stratford to see a Shakespeare play. On one of these visits, she meets a charming foreign man named Danilo. Their encounter is brief but deeply affecting. After a brief kiss at the station, he invites her to return the following year. After an anxious preparation, Robin returns full of anticipation, but a misunderstanding derails the reunion. She encounters Danilo’s twin brother, whom she mistakes for him. His reactions lead her to believe that Danilo has rejected her. The missed connection leaves Robin heartbroken, convinced that she has lost her only chance at love. Years later, Robin learns the truth: that her happiness was thwarted not by fate but by a trick of circumstance and mistaken identity.

In “Powers,” Nancy is a young woman whose life becomes entwined with that of Tessa, an outsider rumored to possess psychic abilities. Nancy becomes engaged to Wilf, a doctor. Through Wilf, she meets his worldly cousin, Ollie, whom she introduces to Tessa. Though Nancy only introduces Ollie to Tessa to impress him, Tessa’s powers leave an impression on him. Against Nancy’s advice, Tessa agrees to travel to the United States with Ollie, who promises that scientists will pay to study her powers. Years later, however, Nancy visits a medical facility where Tessa has spent many years. Ollie abandoned her, and her life dwindled. Later, Nancy has a chance encounter with Ollie. He seems down on his luck and explains how he and Tessa supported themselves via a vaudeville act. Nancy, sensing that he’s obfuscating his role in abandoning Tessa, parts ways with him. Later, she has a dream in which Tessa is excited when her powers briefly flicker back to life, only to realize that Ollie is planning to commit her to a mental health facility to free himself of responsibility to her.