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Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier Audiobook
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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 appeared in the Alaska frontier outpost of McCarthy with his wife and fifteen children in tow, his new neighbors had little idea of the trouble to come. The Pilgrim Family presented themselves as a shining example of the homespun Christian ideal, with their proud piety and beautiful old-timey music, but their true story ran dark and deep. Within weeks, Papa had bulldozed a road through the mountains to the new family home at an abandoned copper mine, sparking a tense confrontation with the National Park Service and forcing his ghost town neighbors to take sides in an ever-more volatile battle over where a citizen’s rights end and the government’s power begins. In Pilgrim’s Wilderness, veteran Alaska journalist Tom Kizzia unfolds the remarkable, at times harrowing, story of a charismatic spinner of American myths who was not what he seemed, the townspeople caught in his thrall, and the family he brought to the brink of ruin. As Kizzia discovered, Papa Pilgrim was in fact the son of a rich Texas family with ties to Hoover’s FBI and strange, oblique connections to the Kennedy assassination and the movie stars of Easy Rider. And as his fight with the government in Alaska grew more intense, the turmoil in his brood made it increasingly difficult to tell whether his children were messianic followers or hostages in desperate need of rescue. In this powerful piece of Americana, written with uncommon grace and high drama, Kizzia uses his unparalleled access to capture an era-defining clash between environmentalists and pioneers ignited by a mesmerizing sociopath who held a town and a family captive.
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“Not since The Shining has family life off the gridseemed as terrifying as it does in Pilgrim’sWilderness, by Tom Kizzia, but this time the chills come from nonfiction.”
— New York Times
Quotes
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“An uncommonly insightful book...an ambitious literary work disguised as a page-turner.”
— Jon Krakauer, New York Times bestselling author -
“What an epic story—sociopathy and crazy ideology hits the final frontier.”
— Bill McKibben, New York Times bestselling author -
“Extraordinary...Kizzia has done an outstanding job unpacking Pilgrim’s story; the book is superbly researched, the writing clear and unflinching.”
— Wall Street Journal -
“Measured, painstakingly reported and gripping, giving us a true look at an escapist nightmare in America’s mythic and fading frontier.”
— Los Angeles 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.”
— Daily Beast -
“Reads like a bewitching, brilliant novel...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.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune -
“A gripping nonfiction thriller told with masterful clarity.”
— Outside Magazine -
“A journalist’s gripping account of a modern fundamentalist Christian pioneer family and the dark secrets that held it together…Provocative and disturbing.”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“A masterful book…Kizzia withholds information until the right moment, building suspense by staying with a linear narrative that gradually reveals the monster at the center.”
— Oregonian
Awards
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A Barnes & Noble Best Book of July 2013
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An Amazon Top 100 Book of 2013
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A Mother Jones Best Book of 2013
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About Tom Kizzia
Tom Kizzia has traveled widely in rural Alaska for the Anchorage Daily News, and his work has appeared in the Washington Post and 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.
About Fred Sanders
Fred Sanders, an actor and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has received critics’ praise for his audio narrations that range from nonfiction, memoir, and fiction to mystery and suspense. He been seen on Broadway in The Buddy Holly Story, in national tours for Driving Miss Daisy and Big River, and on such television shows as Seinfeld, The West Wing, Will and Grace, Numb3rs,Titus, and Malcolm in the Middle. His films include Sea of Love, The Shadow, and the Oscar-nominated short Culture. He is a native New Yorker and Yale graduate.