Honoring Cora’s wishes, Matthew takes Leni into the wilderness. Cora asks Matthew to flee with Leni and hide from Ernt while she goes to the police. He takes out his rage on Cora, but Matthew stops him. When Cora decides to push Leni to escape, Leni calls for help, but Ernt hears her. He decides to construct a wall under the delusion of keeping Leni and Cora safe. Once Cora finds out that Leni intends to study with Matthew at the university in Anchorage, she plans for Leni to go.Įrnt grows more volatile after Mad Earl’s family rejects him. He and Leni rekindle their friendship, deepening it into romance despite the tension between Ernt and Tom. Matthew has returned to Kaneq during this tumultuous period. After Mad Earl’s death, Ernt’s behavior leads to his banishment from Mad Earl’s property. He vandalizes the saloon and grows even more erratic. Kaneq has changed during the years, and Ernt reacts with hostility at Tom’s desire to make the town friendlier to tourists.

Ernt’s long absences give both a tenuous peace that shatters once he loses his job and returns home early. Two years pass in which Cora and Leni continue making themselves at home in Alaska despite their rocky beginning. Large Marge and Tom intervene, forcing Ernt to leave town to work at the pipeline during the winter. After her release from the hospital, Cora returns to Ernt, and Leni loses hope that her mother will leave him. As mother and daughter take to the road, they suffer a car accident, and Leni saves her mother by going for help. After she witnesses her father’s violence, Leni insists her mother leave him. Tom’s upbraiding of Ernt results in Ernt’s violence towards Cora back at the cabin. Distraught from losing their already meager supplies, Cora and Leni confide in Tom and Large Marge, their neighbors. During one of his absences, in which he has gone to drink, wolves attack the Allbrights’ animals and kill all their livestock. His nightmares resume, and he begins drinking heavily and arguing with Cora. The turn of the weather also brings with it a decline in Ernt’s mental health. However, the cruel winter soon tests Leni’s friendship with Matthew when his mother, Geneva, dies. Leni herself discovers her first friendship with Matthew Walker, son of one of the oldest homesteading families in Kaneq. They also receive help from the general store owner, Large Marge. Ernt finds a kindred soul in Mad Earl, father to the friend who gave Ernt land, and the Allbrights become close to his family. Life in Alaska is more difficult than the Allbrights expected, but they find their place in the Kaneq community.

The great alone review