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: