The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

I was personally drawn to Kristin Hannah’s new book The Great Alone because it is set in the most beautiful place I have ever seen, Alaska. It is a novel of beauty and fear, love and heartbreak. The beautiful setting is also the source of some of the fear but not the worst of it.

Leni Albright is 13 when her dad decides to move their family to Alaska in 1974. He is a VietNam vet and POW and feels he needs the space and a new start. The family dynamic – they have moved around a lot inspired by the father’s big plans – reminded me some of the one portrayed in The Glass Castle.

Two kinds of folks move to Alaska, the book suggests, “People running to something and people running away from something.” This place can be  “a Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next” to quote a character called Large Marge. But the epigraph (I love a good epigraph!) foreshadows there are more challenges to come for the Albrights beyond the long winters and hungry bears:

“Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.” – Jean Jacques Rousseau

The town they move to is extremely remote. It has one general store and of course a tavern. I always love a good literary tavern!

To her left was a saloon called the Kicking Moose. The building was a charred, blackened husk; clearly the victim of a fire. Through the dirty glass window, she saw patrons inside. People drinking at ten A.M. on a Thursday in a burned out shell of a building.

To my dismay a reader doesn’t get inside the Kicking Moose much, but its description here is telling of the condition of this town at the family’s arrival. The Albrights arrive completely unprepared for life here, but they find a close-knit community, and Leni ends up feeling she belongs somewhere for the first time. The community portrayed is some of the beauty that I found in this book.

Although the Albright’s own cabin “looked like something an old, toothless hermit would live in” it is next to the sea and their own private cove and beach. Their first view of this:

“At this late afternoon hour, the peninsula and sea seemed to glow from within, like a land enchanted in a fairy tale. The colors were more vibrant than she’d ever seen before. Waves lapping the pebbled shore left a sparking residue. On the opposite shore, the mountains were a lush, deep purple at their bases and stark white at their peaks.”

But this is only the beginning of their adventure, and the beauty and fear that I alluded to above.

The book also makes many other good literature references. As he announces they are moving to Alaska, Leni’s dad hands her Call of the Wild. And the book’s title is taken from Robert Service 1907 poem called “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” that also speaks to the beauty of Alaska:

Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A helf-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars? —
Then you’ve a hunch what the music meant . . . hunger and night and the stars.

If you’re looking for a solid read to finish out our own winter, I highly recommend this one. I also recommend this for book clubs because it is the type of book that leaves you wanting to discuss it with others.

RELATED POST: Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to download a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase using these links you will not pay any extra but I may make a small commission. Thank you for supporting Leslie’s Bookcase.