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| The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah |
Kristin Hannah, author of the runaway bestseller, The Nightingale, has yet another instant New York Times Bestseller in her new novel, The Great Alone.
It's 1974. Turmoil abounds. Think Watergate, the Munich Olympics massacre, Patty Hearst's kidnapping, and Vietnam. Despite the great uneasiness of the times, our country's immense angst is no match for that which churns within Ernt Allbright, recently returned prisoner of war.
In search of escape from what Allbright perceives as external madness, he loads up the VW van and moves his family off-grid to Alaska's remote wilderness. For a few idyllic weeks of summer, there is bliss in the Allbright's ramshackle cabin. Just as Alaskan summers are the most fleeting of seasons, the much-needed respite known by Ernt's wife, Cora, and teen daughter, Leni, will disintegrate with the eternal darkness of the Arctic winter. It is in the midst of Ernt's downward spiral that the women in his life will learn the truest lessons about what it means to survive, to love, and to find yourself.
Hannah's descriptions of Alaska's raw beauty are breathtaking. It is here that her writing soars. Having spent significant time immersed in the splendor of the last frontier (her family owns an adventure lodge there), the author has an intimacy that draws the reader into her own authentic wilderness experience. Even when the circumstances in the story were bleak, or daunting, I found myself wanting to pack up and leave for the Great Alone.
The book's title comes from a poem by Robert W. Service:
"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... "
It is that awful clarity, and the many different kinds of alone, that make this a powerful story of forging the only kind of connectedness that really matters.
Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN) and/or Esty (Awin) Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”
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