alaska – Pleasant Nights

Well, Kristin Hannah is two for two. Two books I loved and two books that made me cry. I read The Nightingale awhile ago and really enjoyed it, but didn’t give it five stars because I felt it dragged in parts. This one, however, I would call one of the best books I read this year. I absolutely loved it.

From Goodreads: Alaska, 1974. Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.

Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if it means following him into the unknown.

In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska―a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.

I have ZERO desire to ever live off the grid. I like indoor plumbing, central heat and air, and being five minutes away from everything. I’m okay not eating moose, carrying a whistle to ward off bears, and I definitely hate being cold. That said, my lack of desire to be in Leni’s position didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book.

This book really is just gorgeous in its passion, splendor, and trauma. Leni and Cora’s life is hard. Ernt is horrible (TW for domestic abuse). The scenery is a character of its own. And if you don’t cry at this book, I’m not sure you’ve got a soul. Kidding…I know some people aren’t cryers, it’s fine. I’m usually not a crier, but my gosh, this book. I was just sucked in. I think that’s the test of a great book. My world disappeared, and I was wholly in Leni’s.

The Wild Truth

I read Into the Wild around the time the movie came out. I can’t remember if I read it first or saw the movie first, but in any case, both had a pretty big impact on me. I was fortunate enough to teach excerpts as well during a unit on transcendentalism. I had the students read the excerpts alongside excerpts from Walden, comparing and contrasting the thoughts and ideas each presented. Obviously, the ideas were a bit different since Walden is a first-person account and Into the Wild is told about the author, rather than the author’s own words, but Jon Krakauer was also an outdoorsman who presented the Chris McCandless’s ideas seamlessly.

The Wild Truth is the other side of the story from Chris’s sister’s perspective. Carine discusses their rocky childhood. Their father was married to another woman when he had children with Chris and Carine’s mother. They have a slew of half-siblings. Their parents eventually married, but life wasn’t easy. They were verbally abused on a daily basis from both parents. Carine explains why this information wasn’t included in Into the Wild. She told Krakauer the entire story but was always hopeful for reconciliation with her parents, so she asked him to gloss over the terrible childhood. When she felt she couldn’t keep quiet any longer, she published her own story.

I can’t say I enjoyed this book, simply because it’s really painful to read about other people’s suffering. And I really didn’t see *why* this book needed to be published. I’m not saying Carine should have kept protecting her abusive parents, but this could easily have been told in a series of articles. Much of the book was about Carine and her life, which was fine, but not really all that interesting to me. She reiterated her love for Chris, which I fully believe (she named her daughter after him) and her half-siblings who were always there for her and Chris. As far as memoirs go, this one felt a bit unnecessary, but it was nice to revisit Chris and reminisce on the impact he had in the world.