Kristin Hannah’s new novel looks at the challenges of living in Alaska
Kristin Hannah’s new novel makes Alaska sound equally gorgeous and treacherous — a glistening realm that lures folks into the wild and then kills them there. It’s the essential setting of “The Great Alone,” an epic story about a teenage girl trapped in her parents’ toxic marriage.
Hannah, the author of more than 20 novels, including “The Nightingale” (2015), which sold 4 million copies, has a sharp eye for drama. This time around, she draws directly on her own family’s knowledge of the challenges and rewards of living on the last frontier. In the 1980s, her parents co-founded what is now the Great Alaska Adventure Lodge, which is still operating out of Sterling, Alaska.
The story opens in 1974 when an army vet named Ernt Allbright inherits an Alaskan cabin and 40 acres from a buddy he served with in Vietnam. The timing couldn’t be better. Ernt can’t keep a job — or stop drinking — and the country feels to him like it’s collapsing from coast to coast with scandals in Washington, D.C., and serial killers in Washington state. “Think of it,” Ernt tells Cora, his long-suffering wife. “A house that’s ours. That we own. In a place where we can be self-sufficient, grow our vegetables, hunt our meat, and be free.”
For Cora, Alaska doesn’t have much to offer, but she’s wound her will around Ernt’s erratic desires for so long that refusing him is impossible.
The cabin that Ernt inherited turns out to be an abandoned shack. It has no water or electricity. Ernt and Cora know nothing about growing their own vegetables or hunting their own meat. And, as Ned Stark would say, “Winter is coming.” Hannah notes that the dangerously naive Allbrights have chosen to live on “a piece of land that couldn’t be accessed by water at low tide, on a peninsula with only a handful of people and hundreds of wild animals, in a climate harsh enough to kill you. There was no police station, no telephone service, no one to hear you scream.”
And it turns out that living on a frozen hellscape where the night can be 18 hours long is not the best place for a violent alcoholic suffering from untreated depression and PTSD. It’s not so hot for his wife, either, but she’s drunk on the misconception that every jealous beating is a mark of her husband’s devotion.
We experience this harrowing tale from the point of view of their teenage daughter, Leni. While Ernt and Cora play out the captivating disaster of their union, Leni remains an irresistibly sympathetic heroine who will resonate with a wide range of readers. (And moviegoers, too. TriStar Pictures just purchased the film rights.)
The weaknesses of “The Great Alone” are usually camouflaged by its dramatic and often emotional plot. It all skates along quickly, but slow down, and you’re liable to crack through the thin patches of Hannah’s style. No Alaskan trail is marked as clearly as the path of this story, which highlights every potential danger.
But who cares? By the end, I was surrounded by snow drifts of tissues damp with my tears, which may be as close as I’ll ever get to the last frontier.