The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

“I never found another man worth having. You know what they say about finding a man in Alaska—the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

Alaska isn’t about who you were when you headed this way. It’s about who you become.

In real life, she saw, it wasn’t like that. It was sadness opening up inside of you, changing how you saw the world.

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.

Leni saw suddenly how hope could break you, how it was a shiny lure for the unwary.

You were supposed to be safe in your own home, with your parents. They were supposed to protect you from the dangers outside.

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.

up here, lots of people had been one thing on the Outside and became another in Alaska.

Alaska was full of unexpected people—

too, and suddenly Leni understood the reality of her world, the truth that Alaska, in all its beautiful harshness, had revealed. They were trapped, by environment and finances, but mostly by the sick, twisted love that bound her parents together.