Ben’s Book Club

Missing in every sense of the word, a man walks into the landscape and doesn’t stop. Following a traumatic event, in all weather and across all kinds of terrain, Ingvar walks until he can go no further, then gets up and does it again the following day, week after week, month after month, across Australia. For three years he doesn’t know why he keeps going, or whether he is walking towards something or away from it.

That is, until he comes to a remote tropical valley harbouring secrets and misfits. There a recently widowed woman, Hilda, allows Ingvar to live in a shed on her property. He hasn’t spoken for three years and Hilda chats frequently with her dead husband, but somehow they tolerate each other as they both struggle with the haunting impact of their pasts and grief that won’t let them go.

Steeped in mystery and foreboding, Why Do Horses Run? asks crucial questions about love and loss, and what might make a person want to disappear and hit the road indefinitely. It is about our differing responses to trauma and how it can follow us no matter how far we go to get away. This is an incredible debut explores the propensity of the natural world to both heal and harm, as well as the ineradicable power of kindness and community.