The Great Alone

Author/Guide: Kristin Hannah

Why a Booktrail?

1974: Untamed. Unpredictable. Is that just the country or the people who live there

ISBN: 978-1447286004
Genre: Biography/memoirs, Fiction

Comment

What you need to know before your trail

Leni Allbright lives with her mother Cora and father Ernt. They’ve moved around a lot as her father can’t find a place that suits him. He’s damaged from his time in Vietnam and struggles to keep his emotions and anger in check. All Leni has ever known is her parents arguing and her mother bruised.

Then Ernt gets a letter from the family of a man he fought beside in the war. He’s been left a cabin and some land in Alaska. The chance to move his family up there beckons…but what will they do when there’s no where left to run? And where there’s no where left to hide?

Locations

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Travel Guide

Alaska

“Whalecome to Alaska”

Alaska seems like a beautiful if not cold and icy paradise. Life is not easy here – the community is small and a series of homesteads with names like Large Marge’s Place. The people who live there are as colouful as their names. Mad Earl being another case in point. Oh and then there’s the Shackleshop – a shop which sells snacks and tackle – the two essentials in this part of the world
“Jack London said there a thousand ways to die in Alaska”

Life here is tough – man has to respect the land he lives on and lives off. Surviving is all you can hope for, but the rest of the villagers help out when they can.

“Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again

Life for an already stretched family are highlighted in the abuse and tension which follow.

The descriptions of the landscape are amazing:

“Leni saw that the water in Kachemak Bay wasn’t as calm as it had looked from the safety of the shore, Out here, the sea was wild and white-tipped.”

“It was beautiful, magical, wild”

“This was no town, An outpost maybe. The kind of place one might have found on a wagon train headed west a hundred years ago, the kind of place no one stayed.”

“On either side, there was grass that grew wild and sticker bushes and trees tall enough to block the view of anything else.”

Winter here can kill. The key to surviving here is preparation:

And the stories and rhymes to come from it:

“There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who toil for gold;

The Arctic Trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold”

In the author’s acknowledgements Kristen explains that the book is based on her family’s experiences. Remarkable.

Streetview Maps

A) Alaska - Homer spit road

C) Alaska - Houses at Katchemak

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

What a remarkable and all encompassing story. This compelled me to read it but made me feel uncomfortable and uneasy all at the same time. The result is quite something – the way the writing draws you in to that landscape and then never lets you go.

From early on, I was enthralled with the way Kristen wrote and evoked the landscape – no simple scenes of snow and ice here – these were feelings, emotions of landscape, a hint of salmon fishing, how to keep not just the wild animals but the wild winters at bay, how to live amongst the landscape which could kill you as fast as it welcomed you. I felt as if I was, like those who lived there, merely a visitor to this gloriously ice and dangerous land.

The story of the family, of Ernst’s experiences, flashbacks and actions did leave me feeling very uncomfortable – anyone who has suffered any kind of emotional, physical and alcohol fuelled abuse will shiver at the memories -but it was portrayed as very raw and real. Here I think the landscape and themes complemented each other well and merged so that they were hard to distinguish by the end

What an emotional read this is. The stories of the parents but of Leni in particular was quite a journey. This is a book you don’t just read, you experience. And rural Alaska is the most powerful setting I’ve been to in a long while. Bbbr still chilled several days after reading.