The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

☕︎☕︎☕︎

"Alaska is a world unto itself, and it will break you if you let it."

I am a sucker for everything Kristin Hannah writes. This is a fact I have accepted fully and without apology. They are the only books I force upon my husband, who occassionally listens. The Great Alone is set in 1970s Alaska, a Vietnam veteran moves his family to a remote homestead to escape the world, and the wilderness that is supposed to save him slowly reveals what it cannot fix.

It is so hard to read. The violence is real and unflinching and the isolation amplifies everything, the beauty and the terror in equal measure. Hannah renders the Alaskan wilderness with the same reverence she brings to all her landscapes, and there are passages here that are as purely beautiful as anything she's written.

The darkness is a lot. There were stretches where I had to put it down and walk away.

Three cups: magnificent and merciless, for readers who can handle both.