READING THROUGH THE UNITED STATES...ALASKA

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Alaska...

I am definitely not a big city girl. New York City sounds like a nice place to visit, but live there I could not. All those tall buildings surrounding me would make me feel claustrophobic. Neither am I a live off the grid kind of girl. I like to think of myself as a small town country girl who definitely doesn’t mind the comforts having a Starbucks nearby. Would I live out further in the country than we do now? Yes. In a heart beat. Give me trees, green hills, and mountains and I’m a happy girl. Give me all that with a good cup of coffee in my hands and I’m a really happy girl. 

Would I or more to the point could I live in Alaska? Nope. At least not in the way of the characters of my Alaska novel choice,  The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. It’s the 1970s and Ernt Albright has returned from Vietnam. He and his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, move to an small isolated Alaskan town. They are unprepared for the trials of living in such remote area. Complicating things is that Ernst is suffering from PTSD and takes this out on his wife and daughter. The story follows Leni and she learns to survive and eventually thrive in a horrible situation. 

I had never read anything by her previously, but had heard good things about the author from friends and had read good things on GoodReads. At this point I would love to say that I was enthralled with the book and that all the good reviews of the author made the book worth my time. 

Honestly though I was disappointed with the book. There was just too much going on in the relationships between the family members and eventually the community into which they had moved. The plot line read like a bad soap opera, where anything bad that can happen does happen. It felt like it was overkill;  PTSD, paranoia, spousal abuse, codependency, isolation, teen pregnancy, fractured family relationships...way to much! My brain was overwhelmed, it went quickly past them empathy mode into the are you serious with this mode. 

Normally I’m a supporter of the concept that life is too short for bad books but this time I stuck it out. Mainly because I didn’t want to start over on my Alaska read. Would I read the book again? No. Would I recommend it, probably not. Would I recommend the author? I don’t know, the jury is still out on that one.