The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

Synopsis:

This is a fiction book that starts out in 1974 when the Allbright family moves from Seattle to Alaska. Leni is thirteen years old and lives with her mother, Cora, and her father, Ernt. Her father is a Vietnam Veteran and has PTSD after coming home from the war which results in him having nightmares and anger issues. He is physically abusive towards Leni’s mother.

When they arrive in Alaska, they find out how unprepared they are in order to survive there. It is beautiful but a very harsh and isolating environment. They begin making friends such as Marge, their neighbor, who runs the local trading post, and the Harlans. Leni meets Matthew Walker and they instantly become friends and eventually fall in love with each other and sleep with each other.

Leni finds out that she is pregnant and tells her father and he hits her. As an order of protection towards Leni, her mother shoots her father and kills him, and Leni helps her mother hide her father’s body. Leni and her mother leave Alaska and go to Seattle and live with Leni’s grandparents. Leni has her baby and names him MJ for Matthew Junior.

Her father dies of cancer and Leni and her son finally return to Alaska and reunites with Matthew and he meets his son, and they have two more children.

Review:

I loved this book and found it to be very heartwarming and also loved the physical descriptions of Alaska.

“A girl was like a kite, without her mother’s strong, steady, head on the string, she might just float away, be lost somewhere among the clouds.”

“You don’t stop loving a person when they’re hurt. You get stronger so they can lean on you.”

“All this time Dad had taught Leni how dangerous the outside world was. The truth was the biggest danger of all was in her own home.”

“Like all motherless girls, Leni would become an emotionless explorer, trying to uncover the lost part of her, the mother who carried and nurtured and loved her. Leni would become both mother and child; to her, mama would still grow and age. She would never be gone, not as long as Leni remembered her.”

“And the books. She’d never seen so many. They whispered to her of unexplored worlds and unmet friends and she realized that she wasn’t alone in this new world. Her friends were her, spine out, waiting for her as they always had.”