Dorie - Cats&Books :) 's Reviews > The Great Alone

This is a great book with wonderful descriptive writing about the landscape and climate in Alaska. The majority of the book takes place there and it’s amazing to me that anyone would love to live there, mainly because the lack of much daylight all winter long, and that winter lasts nine months.

It is 1974 at the start of the book and Leni Allbright is the new girl in middle school in Seattle, at the age of thirteen she has already been in many “new” schools, having moved around the country with her parents. Her father, Ernt, can never seem to find a place that suits him, where he can find a job and be happy. He came back from Vietnam a changed man, according to her mother Cora. Leni can’t really remember her father before the war. All she knows is the constant arguing between her parents which usually ended with crying and apologies.

Ernt gets a letter from the father of a buddy whom he served with in the war. He has left his cabin and forty acres of land in Alaska to Ernt. This sounds like just the answer he has been looking for. Cora, who will do anything for Ernt because she loves him deeply, agrees to move the family there.”I need this Cora. I need a place where I can breathe again. Up there, the flashbacks and nightmares will stop. I know it”.

What follows is quite an adventure. When they arrive in the summer Alaska seems like a beautiful paradise. They learn how to garden and raise goats and chickens. Then the winter comes, with it’s six hours of sunshine a day and terrible cold. We learn what it means to survive a winter in Alaska, there are many friendly people in the small town where they live who reach out to help them stock supplies for the winter. Ernt is unhappy about the lack of money and provisions and he takes it out on Cora. Ernt is really a terrible man and now the situation has escalated into spousal physical abuse. Leni meanwhile has struck up a friendship with a local boy, Matthew, with whom she bonds immediately.

There are wonderfully described characters in this book. I loved Large Marge who would do anything to help her friends. Mad Earl is a man who is mad at the government, mad at the military and the war which took his son and a very bad influence on Ernt. Matthew is a big hearted, loving young man whose father Tom Walker is the owner of the salon in town and has lots of influence along with money. Tom and Large Marge begin to sense that things are not alright in the Allbright household but there is little they can do because Ernt won’t allow anyone to help them.

Without going into the plot I can tell you that it is constantly changing, made me carry my Kindle wherever I went to keep up with the story and there were no slow spots for me in the flow of this book. There are unexpected tragedies and heartbreak, there is love and resilience and the characters of Cora and Leni are constantly changing and growing. In the author’s acknowledgements I learned that the story is loosely based on her family’s experiences, you can google it to learn more about her family history.

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a well written, beautifully descriptive book that will take you on an adventure that you won’t soon forget.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher and NetGalley, thank you.