The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

He taught her something new about friendship: it picked right back up where you’d left off, as if you hadn’t been apart at all.

A girl was like a kite; without her mother’s strong, steady hold on the string, she might just float away, be lost somewhere among the clouds.

All this time, Dad had taught Leni how dangerous the outside world was. The truth was that the biggest danger of all was in her own home.

Fear and shame she understood. Fear made you run and hide and shame made you stay quiet, but this anger wanted something else. Release.

Up here, in the vastness of Alaska, the words sounded infinitesimal and small. A fist shaken at the gods.

Mama stood behind him, the gun still pointed at him. “Not Leni,” she said, her voice steady. “Not my Leni.” She shot him again.

Thank god dude

“It’s a bad idea, Leni. A terrible idea. If you’ve learned anything from your mother and what happened, it should be this: life—and the law—is hard on women. Sometimes doing the right thing is no help at all.”

Like all motherless girls, Leni would become an emotional explorer, trying to uncover the lost part of her, the mother who had carried and nurtured and loved her. Leni would become both mother and child; through her, Mama would still grow and age. She would never be gone, not as long as Leni remembered her.