Why read Pilgrim's Wilderness?

Book cover of Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier

Book description

Into the Wild meets Helter Skelter in this riveting true story of a modern-day homesteading family in the deepest reaches of the Alaskan wilderness—and of the chilling secrets of its maniacal, spellbinding patriarch.

When Papa Pilgrim, his wife, and their fifteen children appeared in the Alaska frontier outpost of…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Pilgrim's Wilderness as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Charles Wohlforth

Author

Kizzia’s prose and reporting are unequaled, but this dark, Gothic tale is hard to read because of the real-life horror it exposes. The Pilgrim family came to Alaska in 2002, wrapping themselves in fundamentalist Christianity and fighting with the federal government like true pioneers in the wilderness—they became a cause for the right because of how they seemed to fulfill Alaska’s frontier myth. But it turned out the patriarch of the family had created a weird prison of rape and abuse for his uneducated children, which Kizzia was able to get inside with vividly told scenes. And that truth tells…

From Charles' list on the dark, gritty, beautiful truth of Alaska.