But she’s also a bit of a cliche - like a comic book heroine. Leni lives in her books, and lives to face Alaska. She’s not heartless, She’s incredibly brave and grimly mired in the cycle of domestic abuse. She confides in no one, hiding her father’s abusive nature, and agreeing to his every whim, just to placate him. One boy, Matthew Walker, is her age, and in him she finds a fast friend and later, her first love. Leni has to learn the ways of the wild fast, although her father is tough and unyielding in his teaching. She pays for it with bruises and nosebleeds. He is insanely jealous, and Cora is a natural flirt. He imagines nuclear attacks, government takeovers.

He hates the government and all authority, hates people who have, when he has not. He’s laid in supplies, armed up his kith and kin and is ready for the coming apocalypse. Actually, several of the peripheral characters would make a good story - they are more animated, and not a cutout of violent vet, helpless wife.Įrnt seeks out his buddy’s family and Mad Earl welcomes him with open arms - a substitute for the boy he lost.

It’s full of dead bugs, animal feces and cobwebs.Īs is the way in Kenaq, neighbors come to help, among them Large Marge, who deserves her own book, to tell them what they’ll need to survive and help them build, gather, secure and scavenge what they can. Once in Alaska, their homestead is a cabin with no electricity or running water no garden, no animals, no beds or furniture.

The great alone book