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.