My wife really enjoyed this book and gave it 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5. She found it to be quite different from the 2 other books that she has read by this author. It is still about relationships, but different from Winter Garden and True Colors. Since it takes place in Alaska and the author lived there for awhile, there may be some autobiographical background. My wife said the more she read, the more invested she was in the story and the characters. There was one character that she wanted to smack upside the head. On another character, she said "Some people need killing."
I will add my thoughts when I read it.
3-5-18 My thoughts 4.5 stars rounded up to 5.
This book is about love and loss. It is about domestic violence and teenage love that endures. It is about a woman who stays with an abusive man because she feels trapped and hopes that he will return to the man that he was before being taken prisoner in Vietnam.
Ernt Allbright is a broken man who can't hold a job. Before Vietnam, he was a cheerful loving husband to Cora. Now he is moody and unpredictable. He receives a letter from Earl Harlan, the father of his best friend Bo,in Vietnam. Earl has decided to give Bo's 40 acres of land in Kaneq, Alaska to Ernt. Ernt takes Cora and their 13 year old daughter Leni to Alaska for a new beginning. But the long, dark Alaskan winter causes him to spiral downwards. The book is narrated by Leni, who grows up over the course of the book.
If the domestic violence bothers you, please don't give up. You will like the ending.
Some quotes:
Moving to Alaska: "So they would try again in a new place, hoping geography would be the answer. They would go to Alaska in search of this new dream."
Leni's first sight of Alaska: "It was otherworldly somehow, magical in its vast expanse, an incomparable landscape of soaring glacier filled white mountains that ran the lenght of the horizon, knife tip points pressed high into a cloudless cornflower-blue sky."
Title: "The great alone, Leni said. That was what Robert Service called Alaska."
Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and the author for sending me this ARC ebook.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me this ebook.

Thank you to the publisher for this ARC via Netgalley.

I loved this story of a family in post-Vietnam War America, who move to Alaska in search of a place to belong. Hannah's descriptions of the family struggling to adapt to their harsh and beautiful new home draws you in. The characters are drawn with precision, showing their good and their flaws. There are many unexpected plot twists, keeping the pages turning. I stayed up late many nights, unable to stop reading. As I approached the last pages, I didn't want it to end.

1974. It was a dangerous world: bombings, Viet Nam, hijacked planes, college girls disappearing. Though 5 years older than Leni, the main character, my 1970s world was reasonably safe. Hers was not... “Leni heard the despair in her mother’s voice and it frightened her. She knew how fragile it all was: her family, her parents. One thing every child of a POW knew was how easily people could be broken.” And it was about to get worse with a move to Alaska.

The Great Alone is a powerful story, told on a grand Alaskan scale. Story elements of man vs. nature, society self, and each other course along with the wild rivers and multi-dimensional characters.

“Two kinds of folks come up to Alaska. People running to something and people running away from something.” “’A woman has to be tough as steel up here. You can’t count on anyone to save you and your children. You have to be willing to save yourselves. And you have to learn fast. In Alaska you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.’” Mama (Cora) replies, ‘I don’t think we’re well prepared. Maybe we’ve already made a mistake by coming here.’…’I’ll help you…We all will.’”

Summer was mostly work, getting ready for 6 months of darkness. Darkness is a terrifying character. “When Leni turned homeward, she saw an endless black expanse. Nothing distinguishable, no stars overhead, no moon to light a path.” It grew the darkness inside Leni’s dad. “’It’s going to get worse,’ Leni said. ‘Every day is darker and colder. ‘Yeah,’ Mama said, looking as scared as Leni suddenly felt. ‘I know.’”

I loved the ‘historic’ details: a POW bracelet, hair parted in the middle, Earth shoes, plaid polyester bell-bottoms and blue cream eyeshadow brought back nice, but odd memories.

“Such a thin veil separated the past from the present; they existed simultaneously in the human heart. Anything could transport you – the smell of the sea at low tide, the screech of a gull, the turquoise of a glacier-fed river. A voice in the wind could be both true and imagined.”

Friendship, community, first love, pain that goes with first love, lasting love. Wolves, survival, danger, loneliness, forgiveness. Celebration, tenderness, suspense, surprises. Wonderful writing and Story spoil me for other, less crafted books.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for granting access to an arc of this book for an honest review.

Absolutely loved this book. The description says it's a book you'll read well into the night, and it's true. I stayed up well past my bedtime to finish this story up. I couldn't get enough, and had to know what happened to Leni next. Her dysfunctional family living in Alaska makes for a very thrilling and heart stopping read. Highly recommend to all!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for sending me an eARC for review - I ended up buying the hardback, too, since it's Kristin Hannah and I can never wait to read her books! 

I actually did put off reading this for a bit when I had the review copy and I don't know why - I saw so many people speaking very highly of this book and so I went back and looked at the synopsis and when I read that it took place in Alaska, one of my favourite places, and that it was a family's test of survival I had to dive in right away. I adore reading books about homesteading, so reading one that takes place in one of the most beautiful places in the world, the last frontier, was exactly what I wanted. 

What I wasn't expecting was how majorly addicting this book would be! I've always loved Kristin Hannah's writing but I feel like this was one of her most enthralling and anxiety-inducing books ever. I sat and read this story in large chunks but couldn't read it right before I went to sleep because I couldn't put it down! I didn't realize that this was a story about a man changed, after returning from the Vietnam war, and the reader was to witness his complete deterioration into madness in "the great alone" - and taking his family down with him. 

Man, oh, man ... this book had my stomach in knots for the majority of the reading. There were parts that were so intense that I burst into tears and could physically feel my body shaking. Getting to the end of this book was like a test of keeping it together as a reader - I felt a huge weight lifted once I finished and felt like that bookish cliche, like I was letting out a breath I didn't realize I was holding. What I expected was a story about a family trying to make it in Alaska, maybe in over their heads, but I didn't expect such an intense story that I literally had to put aside in order to read something else, just so I could sleep. 

But while this story is intense in its family drama, it is also a gorgeous book about Alaska. I loved hearing about the landscapes, the vast amounts of untouched land, the beauty of this wild state that takes no prisoners, a place where you better be prepared to stay in because if you're not, you could literally die. I visited Alaska about 10 years ago for my honeymoon and it was amazing to revisit the beauty of it, the mystery of it, and feel its pull. Kristin Hannah does such a great job of not only showing us the beauty, but also the dangers of such a place. This book shows not only how wild Alaska could be, but also the wildness within man. 

And lastly, the characters! I adored Large Marge, Tom Walker, Leni, Matthew. I felt so frustrated by Cora, and by Ernst. Kristin Hannah wrote some great characters in this story and it was hard not to feel immense love for some and immense hate for others. Even Alaska is a character in itself. There are some really beautiful relationships, especially between women, and Kristin Hannah presents us with a community that would do anything to protect their own. 

Honestly, I thought that Kristin Hannah hit it out of the park with The Nightingale but this book was absolutely amazing. The Great Alone is a book that you will not want to put down - trust me - and one that will leave you shaking afterwards. It's intense, beautiful, dark, gripping, heartbreaking, and completely, completely addicting. Kristin Hannah's writing is getting better and better and I can't wait to see what she presents to us next.

This book is hard to read due to the content (domestic abuse) but it is SO SO GOOD that you will still want to read it. Ernt Albright is a war veteran that can't escape his troubles. He moves his family to the remote wilderness of Alaska and for awhile they think things will be different but Ernt eventually reverts back to his old ways and no one can help his wife Cora and daughter Leni. This book will make you angry and possibly make you cry but I'm telling you, you won't be able to put it down.

This story haunted me as I read it. Cora meets the love of her life, Ernt, and becomes pregnant at 16. Life is good until Ernt returns from a tour and time as a POW in Vietnam. What follows is a transient life until Ernt inherits land from his eceased army buddy,
.Alaska will be the saving grace of the family. With help from neighbours, they learn survival skills and learn to prepare for winter.
Ernt battles demons and goes deep into prepper world.
Hannah's writing is nuanced yet muscular. The picture she paints of Alaska is breathtaking, the picture she paints of survival in the wild is frightening. The picture she paints of survival,skills in an abusive marriage is heartbreaking. No acknowledgement of PTSD or domestic abuse exhausted in the '70s.
Hannah's story wrung emotions from me that I didn't know I had. Yet I didn't feel her writing tried to manipulate.
A happy-ish ending wasn't what I was expecting, but I don't know what I expected.
My only beef would be that the last part of the book contained so much, it felt like it should have happened over many more pages..
Still, highly recommended.

Alaska is a can't be denied, all pervasive presence in this book. It is most definitely the main character. We watch the Allbright family flee Seattle civilization to start over in Alaska before the cruise ships came calling. Ernt Allbright has been broken by Vietnam and his wife Coraline and daughter Lenora cannot escape being scarred along with them. There is so much pain in this book, but that makes the beauty enduring love even lovelier. The contrast brings tears to your eyes. Do not try to finish this book without tissues on hand.

I really enjoyed this book! I learned so much about daily living in Alaska in the 1970’s. I never really thought about how hard it was to survive in that part of our country. Then add this heart wrenching story of 13 year old Leni who moved with her parents to get away from the evils of the world. Only to realize her Father never could escape his own issues of PTSD that he acquired from being a POW in Vietnam. Overall, the theme of this story is love. The love between two teenagers, a dysfunctional love between Leni’s parents, and the love Cora has for her daughter. I could not turn the pages fast enough for this one but also wanted to savor each word. Thank you Netgalley for an advanced reader copy of this wonderful book.

*4.5 stars* rounded up for The Great Alone!

THE GREAT ALONE by KRISTIN HANNAH is an absolutely wonderful, spellbinding, powerful, tense, touching, and heartbreaking domestic family drama story that was an all-consuming and emotional read for me.  I was totally captivated with what I was reading and it was extremely hard for me to put down.  I couldn’t think of anything else but this story and I don’t think I have felt so many different emotions from reading a book in quite some time. The way that The Great Alone made me feel is exactly how I like to feel when reading a book!  

KRISTIN HANNAH delivers an impressive, well-written and beautifully descriptive story here that takes you on an emotional adventure of the Allbright family which is set in remote Alaska in the 1970’s.  I fell in love with the character of Leni and genuinely cared for her and her wellbeing throughout this whole novel.  

The storyline was so engaging, the characters are all so well-developed, the setting was absolutely fantastic and the ending was bittersweet but satisfying.  Highly recommend!

Published: February 6th, 2018

Thank you so much to my fellow Traveling Sisters for another wonderful reading experience!

Thank you so much to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Kristin Hannah for providing me with an ARC in exchange for a review!

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an eARC of this book for review. All opinions are my own.

Holy cow, this is one of the best books I've read in a long time. The fierce and brutal beauty of Alaska will both terrify you and inspire you to set out and stake your own claim among the few who are able to survive and thrive in that great wilderness. While this is a historical fiction piece, about the turbulence of the country in the 70s and the effects of the Vietnam War, at it's heart, this is a story about mothers, daughters, and the ties of community.

Leni is only 13 when her parents pack up their belongings and head out to Alaska, The Great Alone, to live in a cabin left to her father from one of his war buddies. There, they arrive in the early summer months, completely unprepared for what is to come. In the long dark winter, they will have to deal with the many terrors of trying to carve out a life in the wilderness, while also struggling with Leni's father's PTSD. He is violent, volatile, and sinking deeper into a madness as he tries to provide security for the girls.

Over the years, Leni and her mother must make choices to try to live with this person who consumes their lives, because Cora will never leave him. And these choices make it hard to live a full life. Eventually Leni will have to decide what means the most to her: a false sense of safety like the rest of the "Outside" values or standing up for those you love.

Highly recommend. This is a must read in my opinion. So, so good.

I wanted to keep reading this book to the end so I could find out what happened to the characters. It was a hard push at times since bad things kept happening and there was so little hope for the characters. When I finished the book I felt unsatisfied with most of the outcomes. My conclusion is that this book was too true to real life: bad things happen and not everyone gets a happy ending.

Loved this story of the Allbright family, Ernt a former POW has decided to move his family to the wilderness of Alaska. His wife Cora will follow her husband anywhere along with teenager Leni. Get ready to take the journey of your life as this family learns to survive in the wilderness and each other. An emotional roller coaster that will not stop with plenty of family drama. Loved the back drop of 1970's Alaskan wilderness. I highly recommend this book. Thank you Kristin Hannah for another wonderful story.

Oh my goodness! What an incredibly emotionally-packed book! You name the emotion, I felt it – happy, sad, fear, proud, skeptical, heartbreak, satisfaction, worried, and more that I’m probably forgetting. I also felt the beauty, yet fearfulness of living in Alaska. This makes me wonder why in the world haven’t I read a Kristin Hannah book before this one? I’ve seen her books, but never gave one an opportunity, but I will absolutely have to now!

Starting with the imagery and the feeling of Alaska, it all felt vivid and real. I loved being there in the refreshing beauty of Alaskan days, wanting to explore its natural beauty and perhaps help with storing food for the harsh winters. When winters came, I shivered and worried about survival when food ran low. I just absolutely love when authors can bring you into the world they’ve created.

When looking at characters and character development, they were superb. Broken Ernt’s PTSD was horrifying and to see his ups and downs were extremely scary. Cora’s inability to leave her abusive husband’s nature due to the love she still holds for him was so sad. Then, there was young and fierce Leni. As the years progressed throughout the novel, her growth was logical and heartbreaking. Lastly, even the secondary characters played such significant roles and they felt so real to me. One of my favorite characters was perhaps Large Marge who, though loud, was always reliable and was unafraid to tell the truth.

The plot moved so well and I found myself wanting to slow down this fast-paced novel to savor the story more. Without giving too much away, there were some twists and turns, scenes that were so terrifying and some that were so lovely. Every time there seemed to be a valley of steady plot flow, a giant mountain peak would sneak up on you.

Its historical aspect was interesting. Some that were drizzled throughout included: the injustice views of battered women in the 1970s/1980s, the mention of women disappearing during the height of Ted Bundy, the aftereffects of being a POW of the Vietnam War, and the Great Alaska Adventure Lodge is a real-life experience that wasn’t always there.

Overall, this has become one my favorite books so far this year, and I am so happy that NetGalley gave me a chance to read this! As I have said before, I look forward to reading more from Kristin Hannah.

I would absolutely recommend this read to anyone who enjoys novels with a lot of emotions and do not mind reading some scenes of domestic abuse.

I did not want this book to ever end! I read nonstop, and I can't think of anything else. WOW. I have read Kristin Hannah before (my favorite is Night Road, and I thought that was amazing), but this is AMAZING. I haven't felt so enthralled by a book in a really long time. I will be recommending this book to everyone.

I havent read a book that I couldnt stop thinking about in so long. This was that book. It was fantastic.
The whole time I was reading this, I was dreading finishing it, because I just enjoyed reading it so much.

I am not sure if I'd want a sequel to this, but I could have done with about 100 more pages, just to get more of an ending. The ending as it was was great, but compared to the rest of the book, it felt a bit tidy.

Overall a great read.

Kristin Hannah is truly one of the best writers of setting and female relationships I’ve ever read.

This book takes readers to the wilds of Alaska, a place where there is so little that it’s barely civilization. Growing up in the 70s with a father who isn’t quite the same after the Vietnam War and a mother who loves him anyway, Leni has to learn how to survive the trials that come from both her outdoor environment and the one behind closed doors. As she gets older and falls in love with the boy down the road - the one whose father her own father despises - she finds herself facing more challenges than what she could have expected.

This book will awe you, fill you up, and tear you down to ugly crying, all at the same time. I absolutely LOVED this story and definitely recommend!

I was lucky to receive an advance copy of Kristin Hannah’s new novel, "The Great Alone," from NetGalley, and I couldn’t wait to dive in. Each of Hannah’s books is unique, and she does exhaustive research to make the places, characters, and historical time periods come alive. "The Great Alone" is no exception.

Based on her family’s own history, "The Great Alone" tells the story of Leni, Cora, and Ernt Allbright. After surviving as a POW in Vietnam, Ernt suffers from PTSD and moves his family from place to place, attempting to find a place where he feels at peace, where nightmares won’t haunt him, and uncontrollable anger won’t rise to the surface. As a young teenager, Leni inherits a cabin in a remote corner of Alaska from a soldier friend who died in the war. Ernt decides that this is the opportunity he has been searching for, and the family of three makes the journey to the Alaskan wilderness. When they arrive, they realize that living in this desolate and unforgiving land takes hard labor, perseverance, and ingenuity, but after they settle in, they began to appreciate the spectacular unspoiled beauty of the Alaskan wilderness. Alaska becomes an intriguing main character, something I love in a novel, and Hannah’s descriptions of the landscape are captivating and exquisite:

“It was otherworldly somehow, magical in its vast expanse, an incomparable landscape of soaring glacier-filled white mountains that ran the length of the horizon, knife-tip points pressed high into a cloudless conflower-blue sky. Kachemak Bway was a sheet of hammered sterling in the sunlight. The air smelled briny, deeply of the sea. Shorebirds floated on the wind, dipped and rose effortlessly.”

But when the brutal, dark winter arrives, the beauty and security of their cabin in the woods disappears. The days are short, and the nights, when Ernt becomes angry and violent, seem to last forever. Forced to grow up before her time, Leni does everything she can to protect herself and her mother from Ernt’s wrath.

Though many fellow book lovers on the internet have used the word ‘wonderful” to describe this novel, that word is not the right descriptor in my eyes. The writing is magnificent, the characters are flawed and complex, and the story is heart-breaking, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, but this is a tough book to read. I usually read a book in three to four days at the most, and this one took me almost two weeks to get through. Every time I sat down to read, I had to steel my heart against the pain, fear, and violence I knew I would find, but ultimately the emotional investment totally paid off.

Kristin Hannah is an incredibly talented writer. She is also the author of the international bestseller about the World War II era, The Nightingale which sold 4 million copies. Her newest book, also historical fiction, is a radical departure from The Nightingale. The Great Alone is primarily set in Alaska, in the 1970s and reflects the author’s family ties to that state and love of the state. The descriptions of Alaska were beautiful..
The book takes its title from a lyrical poem published in 1907 by Robert Service called “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” which includes the following lines:
“Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear?”
Service was famous for the poetry he wrote about Alaska, and It is still very readable a century later ( I used to teach it and my middle schoolers quite liked this poem) and those lines aptly describe the setting of this book.
The book was not all beautiful descriptions of Alaska, however. It contained a lot of graphic domestic violence that was extremely unpleasant to read. So, be forewarned—do not pick up this novel unless you are ready to deal with this.
Because, Hannah will have you so emotionally invested in the characters you will not want to stop your journey until you have reached the last page. The characters also tend to be either good or bad with no gray areas.
As the novel opens, the year is 1974, and you see through the eyes of 13-year-old Leni, the dysfunctional marriage of her parents, Ernt, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and her mother, Cora, who became a teen bride when she became pregnant with Leni.
Ernt is paranoid and can’t seem to hold a job, stop drinking, or stop behaving with violence towards his wife, Cora, who does nothing to extricate herself or her daughter from the situation. She sees the beating as evidence of her husband’s love.
As the novel opens, the family has moved multiple times in a quest to find peace. So,when Ernt inherits a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness from a buddy he fought alongside in Vietnam, it seems like a chance to make a new start in life. Or, as Ernt tells his 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.”
Instead, they move away from civilization into an environment where survival is hard, the weather is brutal, and Ernt becomes more and more paranoid and violent. The cabin is primitive and ramshackle and has no electricity or running water. The author describes it as: “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.”
But, the ray of sunshine in the situation are the kind hearted denizens of that peninsula—eccentric though they may be, who care about Leni and Cora.
The book is honestly really sad until the very last portion of the book which I found redemptive. Others will be more skeptical, but I liked it.
Hannah is an amazing writer, but if I had not agreed to review this book, I might honestly have not finished it because of the abusive situation. That is only my opinion, however. Others, who are less tender hearted, will not agree. Thank you St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book and for allowing me to review it.

As soon as I read this book, I wanted to recommend it to my friends, but it wasn't published yet. Great read by a great storyteller author!

I don't think I've read a Kristin Hannah book, that I didn't like. This one was certainly no exception. I loved the characters and the story line. It was a book that I could relate to. Love, loss, family ties,.... I almost wanted to stop reading towards the end, because I lost my mom to Stage IV lung cancer... and it felt so familiar. Painfully familiar. But I kept on because I wanted to know how it ended and how Leni made out in life. What a great read. I felt like I was right there, in every scene. I could see the characters exactly as described.. including their surroundings. Their homes. Their friends. The tragedies. I am putting this one on my blog, to recommend to my readers. What a take on fresh starts, sorrowful endings, taking chances.
Excellent read, Kristin. Thank you