The Great Alone

Kristin Hannah takes the title for her novel The Great Alone (#769) from a Robert Service poem about Alaska.  It certainly is a character in this story, beautiful, harrowing and deadly in turn, although the real danger to young Leni Allbright here comes from within her own family.

Ernt Allbright has returned from Vietnam a changed man.  Leni only has vague memories of the time before, when she and her mother and father would have adventures moving place to place.  Now he's angry and paranoid, and their moves are becoming more frequent, when a letter catches up with him; one of his POW buddies has left land and a cabin to Ernt in the  remote Alaskan settlement of Kaneq.  Her father buys a battered old VW bus, packs up everything the Allbrights own (which isn't much) and heads for Alaska with his family in tow.

Neither Leni nor her mother Cora are prepared to live off the grid in a place with no electricity or running water, and where their survival will depend on what they can hunt, catch, fish or grow for themselves.  Mistakes can be deadly here, and the Allbrights must learn fast.  Members of the community help, but Mad Earl Harlan's family are survivalists.  Ernt feels a special bond for them, since it was Bo Harlan's land he inherited.  The old man feeds Ernt's hatred for the government, the Man, and anyone who doesn't agree with him.  The problem is that in the depths of the bleak Alaskan winter dark, Ernt takes out his rage with life on Cora.

This is first and foremost a tale of survival, both physical and emotional.  The strength of the bonds of love and community are a counterbalance to the horrors happening in the Allbright compound.  It doesn't seem possible that Leni will endure, but she does, at incredible cost to herself and those she loves.  This is a powerful read, not to be missed.