The Great Alone: Kristin Hannah: A Story of Love, Heartbreak and Survival, From the Bestselling Author of The Nightingale

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Leni is hopeful when they first arrive in the small outpost of Kaneq. But as the days shorten and the sky darkens when winter appraches, Ernst’s temper and volatile impulses re-emerge. As Leni grows up, she and her mother must manage Ernst and the demons which haunt him. Book Review Welcome to my blog! I\'m Laura and I don\'t go anywhere without a book. I love to read and travel and over time What\'s Hot? has become a hub for fellow literary travellers. Leni frowned. Were they communists now? She was pretty sure her dad hated the commies as much as he hated the Man and hippies. All this time, Dad had taught Leni how dangerous the outside world was. The truth was that the biggest danger of all was in her own home.

Leni goes to school on Monday. It's a tiny one-room schoolhouse with only six students. Tica Rhodes, a native, is the teacher. Leni is seated next to Matthew Walker, who is her age (13), and they get along well. Leni was spellbound. She still couldn’t believe that an army could march in and take a teenager from her apartment. How could anyone be safe anywhere in a world like that? And how did a rich teenager become a revolutionary named Tania? They have a funeral for Geneva. Leni meets Aly, Matthew's sister. Cora gives Tom Walker her condolences and Ernst gets jealous. They argue after the funeral, and Ernst hits Cora. Leni realizes that it has happened before but this is the first time she's seen it.When it comes to emotionally compelling fiction, without a doubt, Kristin Hannah is in a league of her own. Over the years, she’s taken me to the brink of hopelessness, dangled me over the edge of complete devastation and trampled my heart in the process. Where I think her magic lies is in knowing just the right moment to toss out a lifeline—restoring faith, inciting love and in some cases, leaving me in complete and utter awe. The Great Alone takes its title from a line in " The Shooting of Dan McGrew," a poem composed by Robert W. Service, whose work inspires the main character throughout the book. Dad kept his arm around Mama’s waist and pulled her over to the kitchen table. He pulled out a chair, said, “Leni, come in here!”

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." In The Great Alone, the Allbrights are a family who move to a small town in Alaska for a new start. Ernst, the father, is a Vietnam veteran and former POW who has struggled emotionally since the war. Cora, his wife, loves him and tries to help him. Leni is their young daughter. The Allbright’s settle in and Leni starts to wonder if things might actually be okay. Unfortunately, it’s not long before she sees things haven’t changed. In fact, things seem to be getting worse.Dad nodded. To Leni, he said, “Bo Harlan was the crew chief and I was the door gunner. We looked out for each other. We were together when our bird went down and we got captured. We went through hell together.” Reading Paulette Jiles' revenge western Chenneville, it's easy to remember she's a poet. She plays ... 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." Cora says she'll help Leni sneak away so she can go to college but advises her to stay away from Matthew until then, to avoid setting Ernst off. Leni does this for months, but in August longs to see him. Cora and Ernst are going to city nearby to see a snow machine. Leni invites Matthew over and they sleep together, but fall asleep afterwards. They get away with it, but it's a close call. Hannah vividly evokes the natural beauty and danger of Alaska and paints a compelling portrait of a family in crisis and a community on the brink of change.

All in all, I absolutely loved this book and I now have to read everything this author has ever written. Her ability to describe the beauty of the harsh Alaskan country is perhaps the book's best feature. There are, however, aspects of the novel that don't live up to the quality of the author's writing in my opinion. I also found the plot somewhat uneven, at times being overly predictable and at others taking improbably twists that challenge credulity. The author starts to develop plotlines but later they're mysteriously dropped. Although I found The Great Alone to be a mixed bag, I imagine Hannah's fans will be able to overlook the book's flaws and enjoy both the beauty of her prose and the romance at the core of the story... continued The Great Alone is a survival story, both about surviving in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness and about growing up with an abusive and volatile father. Ernst is a deeply flawed man. He prefers the company of survivalist and doomsdayer Mad Earl to that of the cheerier and more optimistic people in town. Cora remembers the man he once was and clings to that memory.

1978

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." After Ernt loses another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he is going to move his family to a small town in Alaska, and settle on some land left to him by a fellow soldier. The thought of moving somewhere so remote, so dangerous, so unknown, is tremendously frightening, but Leni's mother, Cora, has never abandoned her husband no matter what he has done, so she's willing to follow him into the wilderness, in the hopes this may be the fresh start he needs.