Two Wolves

Two Wolves is a 2014 middle grade novel written by author Tristan Bancks, a former actor who played Tug O’Neale on the Australian soap opera Home and Away. Now a full-time author, Bancks has published over a dozen novels since 2008. Two Wolves won the YABBA and KOALA Children’s Choice Book Awards in 2015.

Two Wolves explores The Relationship Between Fathers and Sons and Differing Concepts of Justice through the story of Ben Silver, a young boy who tries to uncover the truth when his parents take him and his sister on a mysterious and terrifying trip away from their home. While the Australian version of this book was first published in 2014, the novel was rereleased in the United States in 2015 under the title On the Run.

This guide references the 2015 American Kindle version.

Plot Summary

Chapter 1 opens with 13-year-old Ben Silver working on a stop-motion film in his bedroom. Ben is an intelligent and thoughtful teenager with a difficult relationship with his father, Ray, who often mocks him for his weight and seeming girlishness. Ben’s mother, April, is kind but is also controlled by her overbearing husband. Ben also has a seven-year-old sister, Olive, a spunky and rebellious child who always carries around her stuffed rabbit, Bonzo. Ben hears a knock from downstairs. The police are at the door, asking for his parents, who aren’t home. They leave, intent on coming back later. Just afterward, Ben’s parents screech into the driveway and tell Ben and Olive that all four of them are going on vacation. Ben’s father drives quickly, seemingly panicked, to the home of Uncle Chris, Ben’s father’s brother. Ben is suspicious of the vacation but goes along with it because his family travels very infrequently.

The family stays in a motel that night, and Ben’s mom cuts his and Olive’s hair, claiming that it is typical for people to get haircuts on vacation. Ben reads his grandfather’s journal, which talks about how every person has two wolves inside them, one good and one bad. The next day, a police officer tries to pull them over, and Ben’s father tries to flee. The officer catches up and runs Ben’s father’s license, but as he steps away from the car, the family escapes again, losing him in the woods.

That night, the Silver family arrives in Ben’s grandfather’s cabin, which is isolated deep in the woods. Ben’s father convinces Ben to explore the cabin by calling him a “girl” in mockery. Ben agrees to help his father, but his father instead plays a prank, scaring Ben. Ben sleeps in the car that night, refusing to go into the scary cabin. The next morning, Ben catches his father hiding something mysterious in the cabin’s rafters. He then forces Ben to clean the cabin. Afterward, Ben’s father leaves to find cell phone reception, and Ben takes the opportunity to use his investigative abilities and uncover what his father hid in the rafters.

Under a sheet of black plastic, Ben discovers a grey bag filled with bundles of tightly packed cash. He hears a sound outside the cabin and desperately packs the money away, afraid of his father catching him snooping. His father comes inside and notices that the grey bag looks different; Ben accidentally put it away while it was still open. Ben’s father angrily confronts him, and his mother explains that the money is from the family’s wrecking business, which they claim to have sold. As Ben leaves the cabin, he hears his parents arguing; following this, his father leaves to buy new clothing and to “make the arrangements” (57).

Ben heads down to the creek and, after calculating how much money is in the bag, concludes that his parents are in trouble and running from something. Olive surprises him, and the two build a raft on the creek together to pass the time. They discuss the events of the last two days, but Ben does not reveal his suspicions to Olive. When the kids arrive back at the cabin for lunch, Ben discovers that the bag is gone. Ben’s father gifts him a Swiss army knife and Olive a skateboard. To Ben’s mother, he gives a diamond ring, which she says is the “first real present” she’s received in a long time (76). After all of the gifts, Ben reconsiders his suspicions about his parents.

Ben wakes up in the middle of the night and overhears his parents talking. Unable to stay awake, Ben sets up his camera to record them. In the morning, he watches the tape and hears his father say that he wishes things were different, and if they can’t get new passports in time, the family could still flee into the desert. With his suspicions confirmed, Ben goes down to the creek and practices floating on the raft that he and Olive had made. However, the raft falls apart on the water, and Ben is forced to drag its remains back to shore. Ben spends some time repairing the raft until he hears a gunshot from the direction of the cabin.

Ben hides in the trees but finds his father stalking along the ridge nearby, awkwardly holding a rifle. Ben secretly records him firing the gun at some movement in the trees. He then reveals himself to his father, who says he is hunting for rabbits. When Ben asks about their passports, his father becomes strangely tense. Afterward, Ben’s father butchers a rabbit to eat for dinner. Ben scribbles some notes in his journal, wondering if his family has kidnapped him. As the family eats, Ben’s father steals the journal and mocks Ben for what he wrote, enraging him. Ben attacks his father, but his father gets the best of him and retreats inside the cabin to finish reading the journal.

That night, Ben awakens to Olive telling him that their parents left and took the car. The kids spend the whole day in the cabin without food or a bathroom, and that night, Ben begins carving a trapdoor in the floorboards so they can escape. Right as he succeeds, however, his parents return. They seem panicked and exhausted and demand that the kids pack to leave immediately. Ben storms off to the car and discovers his father’s phone, which he looks through. The phone shows three numbers called earlier in the day and an article about Ray Silver, Ben’s father, saying that he stole $7.2 million that was mistakenly deposited in his bank account. Ben reveals to his father what he knows, and after pinning Ben to the wall in anger, his father angrily runs off into the night.

That night, Ben tries to escape, but as he does so, he sees police officers ascending the slope toward the cabin. He wakes his parents, and the family flees through the trapdoor he cut into the floor. During the escape, Ben gets possession of the money bag, and he and Olive become separated from their parents in the woods. He and Olive run to the raft and float down the river, evading the officers as they go. After the raft breaks apart, they run into the woods, quickly becoming lost. They spend days wandering and looking for food before heading back to the cabin. On the way, Olive passes out from exhaustion, and Ben carries her the rest of the way. When they get back, they recover a little, and Ben buries the money. Then they head down the road and hitchhike into the nearest town.

In town, Ben calls his grandmother, who buys them bus tickets to Sydney. When they arrive, undercover police officers are watching the house, and the kids sneak in through the back door. Ben claims he lost the money, and Ben’s grandmother reveals that his grandfather was also a criminal. Ben wonders if he can become a detective considering the criminality in his blood. Ben’s parents arrive just as the police knock on the door. Ben’s father tries to get them all to escape, but Ben, his mother, and Olive surrender while he escapes over the back fence.

Three months later, Ben is living with his mother, grandmother, and Olive in his grandmother’s home. Ben’s mother goes to a court hearing, and Ben knows that if the police don’t offer her a plea deal, he’ll need to reveal the location of the money to protect his mother. Things go well for Ben’s mother, and a year later, the two return to the cabin to retrieve the money; Ben tells his mother where he hid it, and she convinces him to return it instead of keeping it. At the cabin, they run into Ben’s father, who’s been hiding in the woods for the past year. He steals the money, Ben attacks him, and the two fight before Ben and his mother escape. As they drive away from the cabin, Ben realizes that there aren’t two wolves living inside him, and there is nothing from which he needs to keep running.