The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah is a semi-autobiographical novel about a family’s move to Alaska, set in the 1970s.
You know what they say about finding a man in Alaska—the odds are good, but the goods are odd.
Former POW and Vietnam War veteran with untreated PTSD, Ernt Allbright, decides to move his family to Alaska on impulse, hoping it will enable him to escape his torment. His hippie wife, Cora, and thirteen year old daughter, Leni, go along with it hoping the next move will restore Ernt’s wellbeing.
Alaska isn’t about who you were when you headed this way. It’s about who you become.
Of course moving a slightly unhinged man to an isolated location populated with a tight community of other people escaping civilisation for one reason or another, is unlikely to end well. As the day’s grow shorter and the winter darkness descends, Ernt’s behaviour becomes more and more bizarre and violent. Cora continues to make excuses for him, and Leni finds their living arrangements more and more claustrophobic.
like all fairy tales, theirs was filled with thickets and dark places and broken dreams, and runaway girls.
Characters brimming with eccentricities, small town politics and paranoia’s, good guys, bad guys and the vast Alaskan wilderness tell a story of human resilience and vulnerability living on frontiers. The Great Alone is a dramatic, harrowing tale about family, trauma, small town communities, survival, and the beauty and brutality of the northern wilderness. A gripping read, but not for the faint hearted.
R L Smith 