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.
TOM KIZZIA has traveled widely in rural Alaska for theAnchorage Daily News, and his work has appeared inthe Washington Postand been featured on CNN. His first book,The Wake of the Unseen Object, was named one of the best all-time nonfiction books about Alaska by the state's historical society. He lives in Homer, Alaska.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
#5 on Amazon's Best 100 Books of the Year
A Mother Jones Best Book of the Year
An Outside Best Adventure Book of the Year
“Extraordinary...Mr. Kizzia has done an outstanding job unpacking
Pilgrim's story; the book is superbly researched, the writing clear
and unflinching.” —Wall Street Journal
“Pilgrim's Wilderness is measured, painstakingly reported and
gripping, giving us a true look at an escapist nightmare in
America's mythic and fading frontier.” —Los Angeles Times
“Not since The Shining has family life off the grid seemed as
terrifying as it does in Pilgrim’s Wilderness, by Tom Kizzia, but
this time the chills come from nonfiction.”
—Arts Beat, New York Times
“With even reporting and spare, lovely prose, Kizzia exposes the
tyrannies of faith, and a family’s desperate unraveling. It will
make your skin crawl.” —The Daily Beast
“For those awaiting the next Jon Krakauer-esque classic, look to an
Alaskan writer named Tom Kizzia... A gripping nonfiction thriller
told with masterful clarity...I’m betting it will be the sleeper
hit of the summer. Put it at the top of your stack.” —Outside
Magazine
“Reads like a bewitching, brilliant novel... Even in the hands of a
mediocre writer, this story would be mesmerizing. But Kizzia’s
gifts as a journalist and writer are such that it is a powerhouse
of a book, destined to become a wilderness-tale classic like Jon
Krakauer’s Into the Wild. On one level, it’s a brilliant
exploration of the kinds of frontier issues that most of America
put away more than 100 years ago—rugged individualism vs. community
cooperation and compromise, and wilderness harnessers vs.
preservationists. But most and best of all, it is the story of how
a pack of illiterate, brainwashed children came to realize that the
man they looked up to as a god was actually a tyrant, and how they
found the courage to break free. Here’s to them, and to Kizzia for
telling their incredible story.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Kizzia is a smart, tough reporter who knows a good story when he
sees one and doesn't let go... [Pilgrim’s Wilderness] is a
masterful book. One of its strengths is that by sticking to the
story and not trying to do too much, it does just about everything.
Another is the way Kizzia withholds information until the right
moment, building suspense by staying with a linear narrative that
gradually reveals the monster at the center.” —Portland
Oregonian
“Absorbing...The family’s brutal unraveling is a shocking tale
readers won’t soon forget.” —Seattle Times
“The central figure in this book crosses paths with an incredible
constellation of the famous and notorious and becomes a sort of
evil, Alaskan Forrest Gump...an irresistible page-turner.” —Dallas
Morning News
“The mixture of Texas weirdness with Alaska nativism provides for
riveting reading...Kizzia expertly goes back and forth in time to
reveal the details of Papa Pilgrim's journey from would-be messiah
to pariah.” —Austin American Statesman
“As the Pilgrims go from activists championed by Sarah Palin to
musicians beloved by Portland hipsters to a horrifying fall from
grace, Kizzia’s clear-eyed depiction never wavers. His even-handed
and, at times, sympathetic treatment of the Pilgrims makes the full
reveal of Hale’s monstrous behavior that much more appalling—and
the tale of redemption that ends the book that much more
heart-wrenching.” —Metropulse
“A riveting read.” —Texas Monthly
“Sends readers on a roller-coaster ride that is as thrilling as it
is shocking. Kizzia’s work is a testament to both the cruelty and
resiliency of the human spirit, capturing the sort of
life-and-death struggle that can only occur on the fringes of
modern-day civilization.” —Publishers Weekly
“Meticulously researched, Pilgrim’s Wilderness is an absorbing and
substantive education on America’s Last Frontier encased in a
blood-pumping, nightmarish family drama as brutal as the wilderness
itself. Kizzia writes of Alaska with the affection and steadiness
of a weathered travel guide—the kind who knows the best route in.
And the best route out.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Strong work of reportage... [Papa Pilgrim's] intriguing past
crumbles in comparison to his excruciating cruelty and to the
inspiring grace and strength of his children.”
—Booklist
“The riveting story of a megalomaniacal sociopath who left a trail
of woe from Texas to the Great White North, Pilgrim’s Wilderness
lends credence to the maxim that the unadulterated truth, when
conveyed with sufficient skill, is not only more illuminating than
fiction, but also more entertaining. Tom Kizzia has written an
uncommonly insightful book about post-frontier Alaska, an ambitious
literary work disguised as a page-turner, very much in the
tradition of Edward Hoagland’s Notes From the Century Before and
John McPhee’s Coming into the Country.” —Jon Krakauer, author of
Into the Wild and Under the Banner of Heaven
“This is a riveting, mesmerizing story, stunning and eloquent all
at the same time. I simply couldn't put it down.” —Ken Burns,
filmmaker, The Civil War and The National Parks: America's Best
Idea
“Tom Kizzia's superb book is startling,
unpredictable, haunting, clear-eyed, unrelenting, sad,
and beautiful. Pilgrim's Wilderness, in other words, is like
Alaska itself, a subject the author understands deeply
and evokes with uncommon skill.” —David Maraniss, author of
When Pride Still Mattered and They Marched into Sunlight
“What an epic story—sociopathy and crazy ideology hits the final
frontier. Jon Krakauer couldn’t have done it any better.”
—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth and Deep Economy
“Pilgrim’s Wilderness is a fine book, methodically narrating a tale
of libertarianism gone haywire on a genuine frontier.” —Edward
Hoagland, author of Children Are Diamonds
“Pilgrim’s Wilderness is a terrifying masterpiece, elegantly
written, painstakingly researched, and impossible to put
down. Tom Kizzia has created a classic American Gothic,
chilling, irresistible and wise.” —Blaine Harden, author of Escape
from Camp 14
“Tom Kizzia’s Pilgrim’s Wilderness is a bizarre and twisted Alaska
saga of mythic proportions. This nonfiction gem has ‘Hollywood hit’
written all over it. Once you start reading, you won’t be able to
put it down.” —Douglas Brinkley, author of The Quiet World
“There isn't a bad sentence in Pilgrim’s Wilderness, not a dull
page or sour note. A masterpiece of reporting and
storytelling.” —Zev Chafets, author of Cooperstown Confidential and
A Match Made in Heaven
“The bizarre and tragic true story that unfolds in the pages of
this extraordinary book is like nothing else I have ever
read. Through prodigious research, blending compassion with
investigative skill, Tom Kizzia has woven a mythic tale out of that
most mythic of American landscapes – Alaska.” —David Roberts,
author of Alone on the Ice
“Tom Kizzia hasn't just observed and written about Alaska for
three-plus decades, he's lived it. Pilgrim's
Wilderness is a story that needed to be told by the only man
who could tell it.” —Tom Bodett, author of Williwaw! and The End of
the Road
“Alaska as a land of self-invention and frontier contradictions has
never been better captured than in Pilgrim’s Wilderness. Tom
Kizzia, “Neighbor Tom” to the enigmatic figure at the center of
this riveting story, combines an insider’s view with thorough and
compassionate investigative reporting. This fascinating,
harrowing, ultimately redemptive, and beautifully written account
is sure to become a classic.” —Nancy Lord, former Alaska Writer
Laureate and author of Fish Camp, Beluga Days and Early Warming
“In Pilgrim's Wilderness Tom Kizzia uncovers the tragic
confrontation between America's frontier past and its settled
future. 'The Last Frontier' is the hot bed and Alaskans probably
the most divided and conflicted of all. Mix this with the
attraction that frontiers have for the unstable, darker forces in
the human personality and we get the startling case of Papa Pilgrim
and his family, as well as a hell of a yarn.” —Carl Pope, former
executive director of The Sierra Club and author of Strategic
Ignorance
“A stunning and downright scary tale by one of Alaska's most
knowledgeable journalists. Tom Kizzia's investigative talents
and his love of America's frontier state come through clearly in
this true story that reads like a novel.” —James Risser, two-time
winner of the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting
“Pilgrim’s Wilderness is not a book—it’s a powerful magnet, and
once you begin you will not be able to pull yourself away. This
spellbinding, shocking, and, yes, inspirational story of a family’s
journey into the heart of darkness delivers the raw power and
revelatory truth of a Scorcese film. Except better, because every
word is true.”
—Daniel Coyle,author of The Secret Race and The Talent Code.
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