"The Great Alone" has passed by attention several times in the last year and for one reason or 10 I didn't read it. Then, it was the first book I saw when I opened the doors of our new neighborhood Little library. I grabbed it and guess what...it was signed copy by the author!
from the book:
"This state, this place, is like no other. It is beauty and horror; savior and destroyer. Here, where survival is a choice that must be made over and over, in the wildest place in America. on the edge of civilization, where water in all its forms can kill you, you learn who you are. Not who you dream of being, not who you imagined you were, not who you were raised to be. All of that will be torn away in the months of icy darkness, when frost on the window blurs your view and the world gets very small and you stumble into the truth of your existence. You learn what you will do to survive."
Through the years I have met many folks who have lived in Alaska; fisher persons who captain salmon boats in the summer months. In the winter many those folks come to the lower 48, a reprieve from the harsh existence. There have been teachers, employees of hunting guide services, and pilots. Of course there is a lot of space in Alaska so if you are a person who isn't particularly fond of people, you have plenty homesteading options where you can be the only person in a 100 mile radius. Homesteaders in Alaska are free spirited people who aren't interested in the norms of the lower 48 lifestyle.
That's what this book is about; freedom, strength and fortitude. It is the story of strong women. It is the story of a man who has burned all his bridges in Seattle and when a fallen comrade from his Vietnam unit dies and deeds him his cabin & land, the dad, Ernt, seizes on the opportunity to bring his family to the last frontier. The year is 1974, a turbulent time in our history. The family is woefully unprepared and immediately begin a crash course in homesteading. The book is a raw story of desperation, undiagnosed PTSD, a family held together by love, fear and the misguided belief that they need no one but themselves. One character, Large Marge, describes Alaska as "Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next". It is a tale of an erratic father and an ineffectual mother. It is a tale of toxic love.
As the book plunged forward, I felt it uncoiling, taking up space in my head. Each scar revealed broke my heart and then put it back together. It seems odd to say that a book that makes you cry can be great, but that's how I felt as I read the last sentence. "I will always love you she whispered to the wind, always."