Hotchner's Depression-era memoir, the film follows a young boy navigating life alone in a hotel after his mother is hospitalized and his father is oftentimes absent.

[5] Based on the Depression-era bildungsroman memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film follows the story of a boy struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother enters a sanatorium with tuberculosis and his younger brother is sent to live with an uncle.

His father, a German immigrant and traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which the boy cannot be certain he will return.

The website's consensus reads: "A subtle, affecting, character-driven coming-of-age story, King of the Hill is one of Steven Soderbergh's best and most criminally overlooked films.

[7] In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin says, "The film does a lovely job of juxtaposing the sharp contrasts in Aaron's life, and in marveling at the fact that he survives as buoyantly as he does.