There’s loads that’s familiar about The Great Alone, but it’s done in an unfamiliar way. Can Leni leave the Kenai Peninsula to attend college in Anchorage alongside Matthew Walker, her dearest friend whom she loves? Would leaving her mother mean Cora’s more vulnerable to domestic abuse? It’s the typical scenario of a child who thinks they can be a buffer between victim and abuser. But it is Leni’s steadfast loyalty to her mother, who won’t leave Ernt because she claims he was a different man before the war destroyed him, that drives a small ounce of hope. As Ernt’s violence grows worse, it dominates the novel, which made me physically ill at times. This is when Leni realizes that her father has likely hit her mother all along, but they hid it.

After a few years in Alaska, Ernt thinks he knows better than Tom Walker what it means to be a real Alaskan and decides they should be as isolated as possible.Īnd as his agitation continues, Ernt begins beating Cora. However, Ernt’s family has no idea how to survive in the wilderness their kind neighbors get them set up, teach them, and offer support. It’s unclear to me why the Walker family has money, but Ernt immediately hates the head of the clan, Tom Walker, for wanting to change simple things, like repaint the bar, because Ernt sees it as “some rich asshole” making decisions for other people. These families are living off the land away from society, and it was all started by the Walker family. What they find is a small collection of people homesteading ( check out this blog post for some images) and a couple of businesses - a town store and bar, basically. Cora is always the agreeable wife, and Leni is not a daughter who complains or voices concerns. So when Ernt receives word that his war friend has died and left Ernt a parcel of land with a cabin on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, Ernt decides this is what will make him feel better. Whatever his environment, he’s positive that’s what contributes to his incessant dread. Cora recommends therapy (I was surprised given the 1974 setting), but Ernt says no.

It’s 1974 and the family struggles as Ernt fails to keep a job and suffers from night terrors and what we now know is PTSD.

The third member of their family, Ernt, was in Vietnam and a POW, but he’s finally returned. When she was a girl, Leni and her mother, Cora, spent years alone.

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