The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah is set in 1970s Alaska. The book tells the tale of a young girl, Leni Allbright, who has a difficult home life. Her father, Ernt Allbright, a Vietnam prisoner of war, let his experiences and circumstances permanently alter not only his life, but those of his family. Profound PTSD and the loss of his job led to an impulsive uprooting of the family from Washington state to Alaska.
The family soon found that the inhospitable, harsh, and hostile environment of Alaska was less dangerous than human’s torturous and brutal behavior.
After Ernt loses his job in Washington state, he impulsively moves his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, up to Alaska to live off the land on America’s last frontier. Cora will do anything for her husband, no matter how dangerous it is for everybody around her, so when Ernt packs up their house to move up to Alaska, she doesn’t think twice. When they took the treacherous journey up to the last frontier, Leni was a mere 13 years old.
While some scenes are emotionally hard to get through, including domestic violence, alcoholism, murder, and death of a parent, after reading I felt very connected to the characters, even though I couldn’t completely relate to what they were going through. Some of the other characters in the book, such as the Walkers and Large Marge, reminded me of people in my life, who were there to support me and my family.
Tom Walker and his son, Matthew Walker, were the biggest supporters of Leni and Cora. The Walkers were the richest people in the town, and often tried to use their wealth to improve the run down buildings. This irritated Ernt, because he saw the upgrades as trying to monetize off of the tourists in town.
This caused a hatred against the two, which was especially bad because soon Matthew and Leni would soon form a loving relationship, where both life and tragedy would arrive.
The book spans 545 pages with 31 chapters, and I never felt like I needed to trudge through the book just to mark it as done. This book is considered a coming of age story and historical fiction, and the writing style is very similar to Jodi Piccoult’s novels.
This book gets a 9/10, and is in my list of top five books I have ever read.
