Susan's Reviews > The Great Alone

This book just crawled under my skin and made a home there. It offered so much to me and touched so many cords in my body. The description of living in remote Alaska was so evocative and realistic that I realized I would have been out of there so fast that it would make your head spin. I was invested in the story.

The book starts in 1974 and I was 21 then so the times were quite familiar to me. Leni is 13 and struggling to fit in somewhere, anywhere. Her parents moved a lot because of her dad's temper and drinking. He was a POW in Vietnam and had many unresolved issues. America did such a terrible job of taking care of the vets that we should still hold our heads in shame. There was little if any medical care and what there was difficult to access. Benefits were almost impossible to get and the public would call the vets names and be generally abusive to them It was sad. I know of what I speak as my husband was 100% service connected disabled and it only took us 12 years to get full benefits.

Her father's friend from the service leaves him a homestead in Northern Alaska after he dies. Her father seizes on the opportunity and the family is on the road again. They think this may be the salvation for them but there was never a family less prepared. Life in rural Alaska is hard. There are only four short months to prepare for the hard winter. In winter there are only 5-6 hours of daylight and this is enough to drive many people crazy. I know it would me. The 18-20 hours of daylight in the summer are filled with hard work of trying to survive the winter. There is no electricity, running water, or indoor bathrooms. If you go to the outhouse you have to take a gun in case you run into a bear.

Her father is full of demons and liquor. He regularly beats her mom and then cried for forgiveness. There is something wrong with her mom not only because she accepts the beatings but seems to get something out of it. There is wild lovemaking after the fights and Cora, Leni's mom, ties her daughter into the cycle. She reminds Leni over and over again that if she had know her dad before Vietnam she would forgive him. Leni stays home a lot hoping to be a deterrent to the beatings. She becomes a buffer and a peace maker between her parents. She has no life of her own except for books.

This book deals with a lot of issues and really involved me in the story. I could barely put it down. This is what I learned. I am not a survivalist. I don't want to live off the grid. I want comforts. I do not want to be beat. I want America to take care of its veterans. I want adults to take care of their children instead of the other way around.

If you are looking for a book that really immerses you in the story, this is a great one.