The Great Alone

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The book starts off with Ernt inheriting a cabin in Alaska. He believes this is the new beginning the family needs. Leni says she’ll go along with the idea that Alaska will provide the “answer” because “that was what love was.” What do you think she meant by that? Firefly Lane, her beloved novel about two best friends, was the #1 Netflix series around the world, in the week it came out. The popular tv show stars Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke and Season Two is currently set to conclude the series on April 27, 2023. While Leni feels caught between her father’s PTSD and her parents’ tumultuous relationship, she befriends a local boy. And as the harsh Winter approaches, survival becomes necessary when these characters face a string of haunting traumatic events as dark and cold as Winter itself. The results are both beautiful and devastating.

Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past. He tapped his foot on the floor, played a beat on the table with fast-moving fingers. He unfolded the letter, smoothed it out, and turned it so they could read the words.I’m rereading now and I know I’m gonna wail when I’m reading the last chapters. But at least ending was not dramatic like Nightingale (thanks to the author for not being merciless this time) Tom goes by Harlan's place to offer people jobs paying above average to help renovate the saloon. Ernst sees people accept his offer and storms off in a huff.

Absolutely riveting!...Read this book." —Dr. Miriam Klein Kassenoff, Director of the University of Miami Holocaust Teacher Institute Wait,” Leni said. Even for Dad, this was big. “Alaska? You want to move again? We just moved here.” Wow!! This was a FANTASTIC novel. There is no way anyone could have pried this book from my hands while I was reading it. The ending of The Great Alone is somewhat bittersweet, but it ends with Leni’s total adoration of Alaska.

Book Club Questions for The Great Alone

Leni saw Mama softening, reshaping her needs to match his, imagining this new personality: Alaskan. Maybe she thought it was like EST or yoga or Buddhism. The answer. Where or when or what didn’t matter to Mama. All she cared about was him. “Our own house,” she said. “But … money … you could apply for that military disability—” Leni goes to school on Monday. It's a tiny one-room schoolhouse with only six students. Tica Rhodes, a native, is the teacher. Leni is seated next to Matthew Walker, who is her age (13), and they get along well. Alaska, 1974. Ernt Allbright came home from the Vietnam War a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes the impulsive decision to move his wife and daughter north where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier. Love and fear. The most destructive forces on earth. Fear had turned her inside out, love had made her stupid."

I would have preferred a little less melodrama and a little more introspection in this type of story, but it does make for an eventful plot. Read it or Skip it? Hannah skillfully situates the emotional family saga in the events and culture of the late ’70s... But it’s her tautly drawn characters—Large Marge, Genny, Mad Earl, Tica, Tom—who contribute not only to Leni’s improbable survival but to her salvation amid her family’s tragedy." — Publishers Weekly (starred review) They go to see Earl "Mad Earl" Harlan (Bo's father) and meet Bo's family. Earl is friendly, but also kind of belligerent and paranoid. Thelma, Bo's sister, offers to teach Cora to farm.Larsen, Peter (June 29, 2018). "Author Kristin Hannah tells a coming-of-age story set in the harsh yet beautiful landscape of Alaska in her new book 'The Great Alone' ". Orange County Register . Retrieved March 26, 2021. Welcome to Kaneq, Alaska… I’m making a correction. This was not family decision. Ernt made her family move there. His wife Cora who is suffering from his anger management issues left from traumatic experiences from war and his smart, brilliant, young daughter Leni is also confused to start at a place they couldn’t locate on the map. They reluctantly obey his decision and did their best to make him happy by creating a new house life left in the middle of nowhere. What do you think about Ernt’s character and how he treats his wife and daughter? Do you think he could have sought support in the 1970s even if he wanted to? Leni is accepted to college. Marge says Tom, Thelma, and etcetera have agreed to pay the costs so she can go. There's a graduation party at the saloon for her and Matthew but Ernst refuses to let her go. The land is at the end of the road, past the silver gate with a cow skull and just before the burnt tree, at mile marker 13.

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah is a story set in the Alaskan wilderness. As referenced in the book, the title comes from a line from a poem by Robert Service (“The Shooting of Dan McGrew”) where he refers to the remote Alaskan lands as the “Great Alone”. Leni’s father, Ernt, suffers from PTSD after being imprisoned in Vietnam. He’s damaged and volatile, difficult to live with, but suffering deeply. Kristin Hannah really takes her time laying the foundation for the Allbright family and the tedious work the Alaskan wilderness demands and you know what, that was okay with me. It was around the halfway mark, when she switched gears, that everything came crashing down. As I read about this brave woman--and so many others like her, women who put their lives at risk to save Jewish children--I found myself consumed with a single overwhelming question, as relevant today as it was seventy years ago. When would I as, a wife and mother, risk my life and more importantly, my child’s life to save a stranger? That question is at the very heart of the The Nightingale. It is a question that haunts me still.Ernt was a prisoner of war for several years. We know now about PTSD and the ways in which Ernt would have been suffering and the ways in which he could now be helped, but that help didn’t exist in the seventies. Additionally, the Vietnam vets were often treated badly by people upon their return. How do you think Ernt’s war experiences changed him? Do you believe, as Cora tells Leni, that he was “changed” when he came home? Did the war and PTSD “make” Ernt violent, or do you believe he was violent before? In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska. Leni looked worriedly at Mama. Dad had never said this before. To hear the words now unsettled them. for we few, the sturdy, the strong, the dreamers, alaska is home, always and forever, the song you hear when the world is still and quiet. you either belong here, wild and untamed yourself, or you dont.”