They make an attempt to flee, but it almost ends in disaster.Īuthor Hannah says most people who give Alaskan life a try, run screaming from the endless, grim hours of darkness, before the eight months of winter have ended. Dinner might mean frying two tiny pieces of Spam for the three of them. She cannot fathom why her abused mother stands by her husband and desperately wishes she and her mother could run away. Leni writes, “You could be as careful as a chemist with nitroglycerin around Dad. Matthew, a boy her age, offers her an escape from her belligerent, alcoholic father’s furious rages. Leni finds the tiny village school a refuge from a toxic home life and gratefully makes one true friend there. But in her latest, “The Great Alone,” she takes you miles away to our 49th state, immersing the reader in the grandiosity, splendor, dangers and difficulties of the four seasons of Alaska, giving each one a personality, as they become a character in this saga. Her best-selling books, including “The Nightingale,” “Firefly Lane,” “Winter Garden,” attest to that.

When you read a book by Kristin Hannah, you can expect excellent character development and lush descriptions of scenery. It has no electricity, no water, no indoor bathroom. He has been given a rickety, ramshackle pathetic excuse of a shack by a wartime friend. Ernt, the father, a former POW back from Vietnam and suffering from what is now known as PTSD, is hell-bent to escape the civilized world. The only child of the Allbright family, 13-year-old daughter Leni, goes with her parents from Seattle to the most remote country of backwoods Alaska in the ‘70s. But in her latest, “The Great Alone,” she takes you miles away to our 49th state, immersing the reader in the grandiosity, splendor, dangers and difficulties of the four seasons of Alaska, giving each one a personality, as they become characters in this saga. Her best-selling books, including “The Nightingale,” “Firefly Lane” and “Winter Garden,” attest to that.

The great alone author