The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

📚Genre: Historical Fiction | Pages: 440 |⭐ Overall: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)

“Before reading this, I hadn’t realized how deeply PTSD could twist someone’s reality, and Hannah captured that descent with painful realism.”

The Great Alone takes readers to wild, unforgiving Alaska in 1974, where a Vietnam veteran moves his wife and daughter to start over in the wilderness. But as the harsh winters set in and his mind unravels, survival becomes a battle not just against nature, but against fear itself. Kristin Hannah delivers a gripping, emotional story of love, resilience, and the unbreakable strength of the human spirit.

I picked up The Great Alone because I’d loved another Kristin Hannah novel and expected this one to sweep me away too. Instead, it started out more like a slow trudge through the Alaskan snow than a page-turner. The story follows a family who moves to the wild frontier of 1970s Alaska — a place as breathtaking as it is unforgiving.

At first, I found it hard to settle in. The pacing was slow and the tension took its time building. But what kept me reading was the father’s character — a Vietnam War veteran unraveling under the weight of PTSD. Watching his paranoia grow in the isolation of the wilderness was both fascinating and unsettling. Before reading this, I hadn’t realized how deeply PTSD could twist someone’s reality, and Hannah captured that descent with painful realism.

The setting itself is vivid — crisp snow, log cabins, and the hum of survival — almost like Little House on the Prairie transported north. Hannah’s writing is richly detailed, sometimes to a fault; it paints the landscape beautifully but can slow the story’s rhythm.

By the final chapters, I was more frustrated than moved — a mix of anger and discomfort — though I appreciated how authentic the characters felt. It’s not a book I’d race to reread, but it offers a stark glimpse into human endurance, family, and the haunting pull of the wild.

🫖 Best read on: a snowy weekend with a wool blanket and hot tea
📍 For readers who love: Little House on the Prairie, wilderness survival stories, and slow-burn family dramas

⭐ Ratings

📖 Story: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)
👩‍👧 Characters: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
🪶 Writing: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
💭 Enjoyment: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)

Claire - My Sister My Books

Amazon Book Description

Alaska, 1974. Untamed. Unpredictable. A story of a family in crisis struggling to survive at the edge of the world, it is also a story of young and enduring love.

Cora Allbright and her husband Ernt, a recently-returned Vietnam veteran scarred by the war, uproot their thirteen year old daughter Leni to start a new life in Alaska. Utterly unprepared for the weather and the isolation, but welcomed by the close-knit community, they fight to build a home in this harsh, beautiful wilderness.

At once an epic story of human survival and love, and an intimate portrait of a family tested beyond endurance, The Great Alone offers a glimpse into a vanishing way of life in America. With her trademark combination of elegant prose and deeply drawn characters, Kristin Hannah has delivered an enormously powerful story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the remarkable and enduring strength of women.

About the highest stakes a family can face and the bonds that can tear a community apart, this is a novel as spectacular and powerful as Alaska itself. It is the finest example of Kristin Hannah’s ability to weave together the deeply personal with the universal.