The Great Alone: A Novel

I first caught glimpses of Kristin Hannah in the televised version of Firefly Lane and then more deeply in The Nightingale, which a friend recommended to me. In that book I was impressed with the depth of both the plot and the characters that Hannah creates. I also loved the historical fiction setting. This year my wife and I vacationed to Alaska on a cruise, and even that short experience allowed the state to get its hooks in me. Then a coworker recommended The Great Alone. I will admit I was not hooked in the first chapter and wondered if I’d care much for the book. But, once the Albrights got to the last frontier, I could barely put the book down! I had to know what would happen next, what mistake someone might make or worse, what second mistake they would make. I have been blessed to come from a world foreign to Cora & Leni’s, but know women who have dealt with internal struggles. Hannah does a wonderful job of weaving this story into a world where most people think only of the outside dangers in the Alaskan wilderness. So many emotions, even tears throughout. I enjoyed the entire complexity and completeness of the story for Leni. The book could’ve ended many times, but Hannah brought complete closure to the story, both for Leni and her mom. I will definitely be reading more from Kristin Hannah!

Every once in a while, you find a book that doesn't just tell you a story—it pulls you in so deeply that you can almost feel the bite of the winter wind and the warmth of a flickering hearth. And your heart bursts open - what a book! Kristin Hannah has a way of making the Alaskan wilderness feel like a living, breathing character that challenges the soul. The Great Alone was that book for me. I was absolutely captivated from the very first page and found it impossible to put down. Kristin Hannah is, quite simply, a fabulous writer. She has this extraordinary gift for exploring the resilience of the human spirit and the complicated, beautiful bonds of family. Her prose is raw, honest, and so evocative that I felt I was living alongside Leni in the Alaskan wilderness, learning what it truly means to survive and to love. To me, reading is a conscious way to choose joy—even when a story is bittersweet—because it expands our empathy and connects us to the wilder parts of ourselves. If you are looking for your next great read, this is the book. It is a hauntingly beautiful reminder of the strength we find when we are pushed to our limits. A stunning masterpiece that I will be thinking about for a long time.

I really liked this story! One of my favorite reads by Kristin Hannah. She made the beauty of Alaska vivid and captured the heart and spirit of the people who choose the wild there. There’s a lot of beautifully layered detail, and Alaska itself (as in many of her books) becomes a character in the story. As usual, the time period she chose also becomes part of the narrative. It brings in rich historical elements and reflects a changing time in the United States with respectful clarity. Music and fashion references are evocative—things like Gunne Sax dresses and Take Another Piece of My Heart pulled me right back to my early childhood. This story has great character and relationship arcs that feel believable and layered, with as much quirk and personality as the setting deserves. My secret favorite character might be a man named Crazy Pete and his wife Matilda… the goose. So yes, there are plenty of memorable characters. There are also serious and dark emotional issues at play in this book, goose aside. The time period matters here. Coming out of the Vietnam War, PTSD was not widely understood, and the lead character’s father struggles deeply with it during the long, dark Alaskan winters. It went dark but I felt the humanity layered throughout. She does this well and once again, I think the author handled this beautifully. I highly recommend this book if you are a fan of Kristin Hannah—it’s one of her best. I gave it four stars because, although I liked the ending, about twelve pages before the actual end I personally felt ready for the story to wrap up. That’s a common feeling I have with this author; she often gives two or three excellent natural ending points and then continues a bit longer. Still, I’m glad I pushed through because what I think of as the “second ending” was very well done. Love this story, and thank you to the author.

I actually bought this book because of the bad reviews. My thought was, that the less than happy reviewers were bummed this story was not an extension of The Nightingale. Whether the two have anything in common, I don't know, as this is the first book by Kristin Hannah I have read. What I will tell you, is buy it. This book is an intensely gripping read, and as someone who has spent time in the far northern hemispheres, I'll tell you it is well researched. I found myself wondering throughout the book if Kristin had lived the bulk of her life in Alaska, and thinking there was no way she hadn't. This story pulls you in from the first sentence, and then drags you--panting for more--smack into a gritty, intensely paced world. This is a dark story, and I think, beautifully handled. It starts, in the PNW, where our heroine, 13 year old Leni is bothered that she doesn't have any friends, and she doesn't fit in. Their life is marked by frequent moves and a shortage of money, an effect of her dad, Ernt Allgbritht's poor mental health, exacerbated by PTSD from several tours in Vietnam. Their lives change, apparently for the better, when the family of the buddy he looked after in Vietnam, a buddy who died in the war; leaves Ernt the buddy's property as thanks for everything Ernt had done for their son. Their spirits are high as they drive the trans-Canadian highway, and arrive in a world that is so different from what they are used to. While Leni and her mom are nervous about what is going to happen with Ernt's mental health up there, things are looking up. They are immediately embraced into the warm circle of the family of neighbors, and Leni finds that up here, she isn't a misfit in school. Everyone seems to dress in hand-me-downs, and when she meets a boy with her passion for reading, she is truly happy. Things quickly take a turn however, as winter closes in, and Ernt becomes consumed by rage and jealousy over their neighbor's good fortune. I would write a longer summary, but don't want to spoil the story for any of you. What I will say, is that this is first class entertainment. For less than $10, you'll spend a sleepless night gripped in a drama so tight, the heart will beat out of your chest. I say sleepless night, because good luck putting this book down once you pick it up. On the upside, you won't even care you got no sleep. The only letdown, will be that the story does end, as all stories have to.

Ughhhhh THIS BOOK! I loved it. And honestly, I kind of wanted to hate it... but it was a wonderful read. Why did I want to hate it, you ask? I've long felt that Kristin Hannah's novels are overhyped and overly-verbose, but to be completely fair, The Great Alone is the first one I have actually finished. The Four Winds was a DNF for me - I found it to be too depressing and, quite frankly, rather boring - so I was very hesitant to pick up another 500+ pager from Hannah. I am so glad I gave this book a chance, though, as it turned out to be one of my top five reads of 2021. The Great Alone chronicles the journey of one family, the Allbrights, who move to remote Kaneq, Alaska in the 1970s after the patriarch, Ernt, returns from Vietnam. Ernt was once a loving family man to his wife Cora and daughter Leni, however the experience of the war left a horrible mark on him and he is prone to depression and outbursts of anger and violence. As the family settles in Alaska and learns to deal with an unforgiving landscape and harsh winters, coupled with neighbors who do not share Ernt's view for the future of their small town, Ernt's fragile mental state begins to rapidly deteriorate. Soon, Cora and Leni realize that they are in a fight to survive not only the elements, but also an imminent danger right in their own home. Hannah's characters certainly were realistic in their emotions, flaws, desires, and actions. I absolutely detested Ernt, and I really could not like Cora for a good 2/3 of the book, but I felt she redeemed herself toward the end (albeit only when backed into a corner). Leni was a wonderful character to get to know, and seeing the world through her eyes was in part like reliving one's teenage years - the quintessential feeling of being awkward and out of place, but also falling in love for the first time and finding a previously untapped inner strength. I came to care deeply about what happened to Leni, along with her friend-turned-love Matthew. The story was an epic, emotional ride set in the wilds of Alaska, and it really inspired me to want to visit (although not in the winter!) and experience the landscape for myself. I'm now planning to tackle The Nightingale in 2022 - I'm hoping it will be an experience on par with this book, as I would highly recommend The Great Alone to all.

Abuse should be mentioned somewhere before you read this beautifully written book about love, hate and the great Alaska wilderness. Reading this brought up memories of the times in my my life that I had been hit. This is the best book I've read in a very long time. Gut wrenching cry out loud around every corner.

The story is touching, but a little clichéd. You definitely get a glimpse of life in Alaska through this book, and I love the author’s writing style. Overall, it’s an amazing story. The book itself has great quality.

I was captivated from this novel from the beginning. So many factors are involved: Broken people with broken souls; family abuse; a sad portrait of a woman who tolerates abuse; the effects of abuse on a child; the tragedy of a Viet Nam Vet's post-war mental breakdown of his once good soul. For me, however, the most poignant and educational factors were the descriptions of a wild, desolate, beautiful Alaska in the 1970's. And the stories behind the characters involved who lived there - and played vital roles to the main characters. The tension is palpable. The story is mesmerizing, soulful, heartbreaking, suspenseful. It's one of those rare novels that had me breaking my rule of reading only at bedtime...I had to find out 'what's happening next?". If the following passages do not whet the appetite, I don't know what will: "Two kinds of folks come up to Alaska, Cora. People running to something and people running away from something. The second kind-you want to keep your eye out for them. And it isn't just the people you need to watch out for, either. Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There's a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you." "Even her laugh seemed at home here, an echo of the bells that tinkled from wind chimes in front of the shops." "Leni stared down at the sea, rolling inexorably toward her. Nothing you did could hold back that rising tide. One mistake or miscalculation and you could be stranded or washed away. All you could do was protect yourself by reading the charts and being prepared and making smart choices." "She was sweating hard, scooping a bucket of water from the creek, slopping it across her boots, when night fell. And she meant FELL; it hit hard and fast, like a lid clanging down on its pot." "Dad's intentions were good, but even so, it was like living with a wild animal. Like those crazy hippies the Alaskans talked about who lived with wolves and bears and invariably ended up getting killed. The natural-born predator could seem domesticated, even friendly, could lick your throat affectionately or rub up against you to get a back scratch. But you knew, or should know, that it was a wild thing you lived with, that a collar and leash and a bowl of food might tame the actions of the beast, but couldn't change its essential nature. In a split second,, less time than it took to exhale a breath, that wolf could claim its nature and turn, fangs bared." "A girl was like a kite; without her mother's strong, steady hold on the string, she might just flat away, be lost somewhere among the clouds." "Fear and shame she understood. Fear made you run and hide and shame made you stay quiet, but this anger wanted something else. Release." "There it was: the sad truth. Mama loved him too much to leave him. Still, even now, with her face bruised and swollen. Maybe what she'd always said was true, maybe she couldn't breathe without him, maybe she'd wilt like a flower without the sunshine of his adoration." "Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you. No one cared if you had an old car on your deck, let alone a rusted fridge. Any life that could be imagined could be lived up here." "It made Leni feel as if she were a coil of rope drawn around a cleat with the wind pulling at it, tugging, the rope creaking in resistance, slipping. If the line wasn't perfectly tied down, it would all come undone, be torn away, maybe the wind would pull the cleat from its home in fury." "There were a lot of bumper stickers like that out here, deep in Alaska's wild interior, far from the tourist destinations of the coast or the majestic beauty of Denali. Alaska was full of fringe-ists. People who believed in weirdo things and prayed to exclusionary Gods and filled their basements with equal measures of guns and Bibles. If you wanted to live in a place where no one told you what to do and didn't care if you parked a trailer in your yard or had a fridge on your porch, Alaska was the state for you." "The farther away you got from civilization, the stranger things got. Most people spent one dark, bleak, eight-month winter in Fairbanks and left the state screaming. The few who stayed-misfits, adventurers, romantics, loners-rarely left again." "Sometimes you had to go backward in order to go forward." "He hadn't realized how time could unspool the years of your life until for a second you were fourteen again, crying from a place so deep it seemed to predate you, desperate to be whole again." "Time was not something she usually paid much attention to. On the homestead, the bigger picture mattered-the darkening of the sky, the ebbing of the tide, the snow hares changing color, the birds returning or flying south. That was how they marked the passage of time, in growing seasons and salmon runs, and the first snowfall." "After that and all the way home, he said nothing, which should have been better than yelling, but it wasn't. Yelling was like a bomb in the corner: you saw it, watched the fuse burn, and you knew when it would explode and you needed to run for cover. Not speaking was a killer somewhere in your house with a gun when you were sleeping." "Love and fear. The most destructive forces on earth. Fear had turned her inside out, love had made her stupid." "Five out of every thousand people went missing in Alaska every year, were lost. That was a known fact. They fell down crevasses, lost their way on trails, drowned in a rising tide. Alaska. The Great Alone." "Someone said to me once that Alaska didn't create character; it revealed it." "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........You learn what you will do to survive. That lesson, that revelation, as my mother once told me about love, is Alaska's great and terrible gift. Those who come for beauty alone, or for some imaginary life, or those who seek safety, will fail. In the vast expanse of this unpredictable wilderness, you will either become your best self and flourish, or you will run away, screaming, from the dark and the cold and the hardship. There is no middle ground, no safe place; not here, in the Great Alone." The physical descriptions throughout the novel are ethereal...you can touch and feel and see what the author paints for you. I think the author did an exquisite job with this novel - my one-time journey through Alaska will never be forgotten.

Fantastic reading!

Incredible story deeply moving and profoundly told. Thank you Kristin for this captivating book, which deeply touched my heart. And thank you to my incredible daughter Lacey for sharing it with me

What a book. Kristin Hannah creates these extraordinary stories and this book is just brilliant. The story follows young Leni, whose parents move into the wilderness trying to find some kind of happiness. Her father came back from Vietnam broken, and her mother is trapped, in love and in the memory of who her husband used to be. Leni senses early on that she needs to escape this situation, but has no idea how, and she doesn't want to leave her mother behind either. Then Leni meets Matthew, a forbidden love grows, and fate strikes. Alaska is the quiet star here, the backdrop for all that happens. How harsh life is, how nature and the seasons dictate everything, all is written so vividly and so beautifully at the same time. An intense reading experience, best enjoyed when you actually have the time to let yourself fall into it.

Okay book-not a fan of her story telling tbh

A wonderful read! Loved every little thing about the book, starting with the plot, the writing style, the climax; all of it was just spot on. Character development was great too. All the emotions and experiences were described extremely well. A five star read for sure ❤️