Sam, the main character in Running Away with Frannie, meets his true love, Frannie, in a West Virginia truck stop where she's a waitress who's just about to be fired for flushing a potato down the toilet in the men's room. Sam, twenty-five, has tried five colleges in five different states and has been a ?factory drudge, mill hunk, mail carrier, hospital orderly, and Chuckles the Clown, ? among other jobs. His restless heart meets its match in Frannie, who has moved forty-eight times in two years, and who believes her special destiny like all the great wanderers in history, ?Christ and Mohammad, Moses and Johnny Cash, ? will be revealed in the journeys she undertakes. What this pair of nomads didn?t count on, however, was falling in love, and how staying together means, at least for a time, staying in one place. This is also, in part, a story of reconciliation with family: after his father's death, Sam discovers, through random encounters with strangers and neighbors, that the abusive and alcoholic father he knew lived a double life that included acts of charity and goodness. By attempting to link his past to his present life with Frannie, Sam hopes to disprove the prediction his father once made for him: ?The whole world is divided into runners and chasers. You?re either running toward, or you?re running away. You?ve spent your whole life trying to escape.?