Rabbit Run

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is 26, has a job selling kitchen gadgets, and is married to Janice, a former salesgirl at the store where he worked. They have a two-year-old son named Nelson, and live in Mount Judge, a suburb of Brewer, Pennsylvania. He believes that his marriage is a failure and that something is missing from his life. Having been a basketball star in high school, Harry finds middle-class family life unsatisfying. On the spur of the moment, he decides to drive south in an attempt to escape. However, after getting hopelessly lost he returns to his home town and, not wanting to go home, visits his old basketball coach, Marty Tothero.
That night Harry has dinner with Tothero and two girls one of whom, Ruth Leonard, is a part-time prostitute. They begin a two-month affair and Harry moves into her apartment. During this time, Janice moves back into her parents' house and the local Episcopal priest, Jack Eccles, befriends Harry in a futile attempt to get him to reconcile with his wife. However, on the night that Janice gives birth, Rabbit, jealous of a past fling between Ruth and Ronnie Harrison, compels Ruth to perform fellatio. Almost immediately afterwards, Rabbit hears from Eccles about the birth and leaves a distraught Ruth behind as he rushes to the hospital.
Janice gives birth to a baby girl, whom she and Rabbit name Rebecca June. Rabbit returns to live with his wife, and accepts a job at his father-in-law's car dealership. Rabbit attends church one morning and, after walking the minister's wife Lucy home, interprets an invitation from her to come in for a coffee as a sexual advance. When he refuses, she slams the door on him in apparent disgust. Rabbit returns to his apartment, encourages Janice to have a whiskey, then pressures her toward having sex in spite of her postnatal condition. When she refuses Rabbit leaves and attempts to return to Ruth.
Fearing Rabbit has abandoned her again, Janice begins drinking heavily that morning, and accidentally drowns their infant daughter Rebecca June. Rabbit returns to Janice and Nelson, suggesting a reconciliation is possible as Rabbit seeks peace. Tothero visits Rabbit and suggests that the thing he is looking for probably does not exist. At the child's funeral Rabbit's internal and external conflicts result in a sudden proclamation of his innocence in the baby's death. He then runs from the graveyard, pursued by Jack Eccles, until he becomes lost.
After wandering in the woods, Rabbit returns to Ruth and learns that she is pregnant by him. Though Rabbit is relieved to discover she has not had an abortion, he is unwilling to divorce Janice. Rabbit seemingly abandons Ruth, chasing the fleeting feeling he has attempted to grasp during the course of the novel. Rabbit's fate is uncertain as the novel concludes.