An Amazon Best Book of the Year for 2013: When the "Pilgrim" family rolled into the old mining outpost of McCarthy, Alaska, they were a sight to behold: Robert "Papa Pilgrim" Hale, his wife Country Rose, and their 15 children--an old-fashioned, piously Christian family from another time, packed into two ramshackle campers. Looking for the space and freedom to live out their lives as they pleased, they were welcomed as kindred souls by the ghost town's few residents. A tad eccentric, they quickly ingratiated themselves into the tiny frontier community through Papa's charisma, their apparent dedication to self-reliance, and occasional family performances of their unique blend of gospel and bluegrass, music that seemed to soar on the conviction of their beliefs. And when they purchased an old mining claim in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park with plans to permanently settle there (dubbing it “Hillbilly Heaven”), it seemed the Pilgrim family had come home to the last existing place in America that suited them.
But Hale chafed against the regulations that came with being a National Park inholder, and he quickly adopted an adversarial stance with the NPS, refusing to communicate with or even acknowledge its rangers. Everything went sideways when he bulldozed a road to town across national park lands, stopping just short of McCarthy in an attempt to avoid scrutiny. It didn't work. When the road was discovered by backpackers, NPS agents were fast on the scene and all over the Pilgrims' activities, and suddenly the humble hermit became a lightning rod for property-rights activists in McCarthy, Alaska, and far beyond.
That's where Tom Kizzia entered the story. As a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, he wrote a series of lengthy articles on the family's struggle with the federal government, and he soon discovered that Papa's past belied the tales he told about himself and his clan. This simple man of faith carried a long, strange, and troubled history: the violent death of his first wife, whom he married when she was 16, and who also happened to be the daughter of Texas governor John Connally; his hippie phase (when he went by the name "Sunstar"), filled with drug-fueled epiphanies and raging outbursts; a contentious relationship with his neighbors in the New Mexico wilderness, who accused Hale of casual disregard for laws that didn't suit his interests (especially the ones related to "Thou shalt not steal"); and worst of all, a dominion over his children that hinted at the most vile forms of abuse. As the situation with the NPS degraded and grew more tense, Hale's behavior became more erratic, driving himself and the entire town toward a denouement reminiscent of Night of the Hunter and Robert Mitchum’s own creepy and deranged (if fictional) preacher.
With Pilgrim's Wilderness, Kizzia has expanded on his original reporting and written a spellbinding tale of narcissism and religious mania's concussive effects on Hale's family and adopted town, a book that's likely to end up on many 2013 Best Of lists.--Jon Foro
Sample images from Pilgrim's Wilderness
The ghost town of McCarthy in the winter of 1983,
the year six residents died in a mass murder on mail
plane day. (credit: Barbara Hodgin) Click here for a larger image
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, the size of Switzerland,
is the scene of the story. A roof from the old copper
mining complex glints to the right of the glacier, with
McCarthy and its airstrip in the trees at center.
(credit: Danny Rosenkrans, National Park Service) Click here for a larger image
The Pilgrim Family Minstrels found fame in Alaska playing
at music festivals and recording a CD.Here some of them
performed in 2003 for visitors at their mountain cabin in
Alaska. Papa Pilgrim is at the right. (credit: Blaine Harden) Click here for a larger image
Review
Best True Crime book set in Alaska - New York Times Book Review, 2019
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
"A riveting read." --Texas Monthly
"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
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Year for 2013: When the "Pilgrim" family rolled into the old mining outpost of McCarthy, Alaska, they were a sight to behold: Robert "Papa Pilgrim" Hale, his wife Country Rose, and their 15 children--an old-fashioned, piously Christian family from another time, packed into two ramshackle campers. Looking for the space and freedom to live out their lives as they pleased, they were welcomed as kindred souls by the ghost town's few residents. A tad eccentric, they quickly ingratiated themselves into the tiny frontier community through Papa's charisma, their apparent dedication to self-reliance, and occasional family performances of their unique blend of gospel and bluegrass, music that seemed to soar on the conviction of their beliefs. And when they purchased an old mining claim in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park with plans to permanently settle there (dubbing it "Hillbilly Heaven"), it seemed the Pilgrim family had come home to the last existing place in America that suited them.
But Hale chafed against the regulations that came with being a National Park inholder, and he quickly adopted an adversarial stance with the NPS, refusing to communicate with or even acknowledge its rangers. Everything went sideways when he bulldozed a road to town across national park lands, stopping just short of McCarthy in an attempt to avoid scrutiny. It didn't work. When the road was discovered by backpackers, NPS agents were fast on the scene and all over the Pilgrims' activities, and suddenly the humble hermit became a lightning rod for property-rights activists in McCarthy, Alaska, and far beyond.
That's where Tom Kizzia entered the story. As a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, he wrote a series of lengthy articles on the family's struggle with the federal government, and he soon discovered that Papa's past belied the tales he told about himself and his clan. This simple man of faith carried a long, strange, and troubled history: the violent death of his first wife, whom he married when she was 16, and who also happened to be the daughter of Texas governor John Connally; his hippie phase (when he went by the name "Sunstar"), filled with drug-fueled epiphanies and raging outbursts; a contentious relationship with his neighbors in the New Mexico wilderness, who accused Hale of casual disregard for laws that didn't suit his interests (especially the ones related to "Thou shalt not steal"); and worst of all, a dominion over his children that hinted at the most vile forms of abuse. As the situation with the NPS degraded and grew more tense, Hale's behavior became more erratic, driving himself and the entire town toward a denouement reminiscent of Night of the Hunter and Robert Mitchum's own creepy and deranged (if fictional) preacher.
With Pilgrim's Wilderness, Kizzia has expanded on his original reporting and written a spellbinding tale of narcissism and religious mania's concussive effects on Hale's family and adopted town, a book that's likely to end up on many 2013 Best Of lists.--Jon Foro
"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
About the Author
TOM KIZZIA has traveled widely in rural Alaska for the Anchorage Daily News, and his work has appeared in the Washington Post and 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.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Prologue: Third Month
When the song of the snowmachine had faded down the valley, the sisters got ready to go. Elishaba moved quickly through the morning cold and snow in heavy boots, insulated pants beneath her prairie skirt, ferrying provisions from the cabin - raisins, sleeping bags, two white sheets. Jerusalem and Hosanna tore through the tool shed looking for a spark plug. The plugs had been pulled from the old Ski-Doo Tundras that morning to prevent escape.
It was late in the third month and the days in Alaska were growing longer. The overcast was high, the temperature holding above zero. They knew they didn’t have much time.
Mountains squeezed the sky above the old mining cabin. Behind, a glacial cirque climbed to God’s white throne. For weeks, Elishaba had been looking up, praying at the summits and calculating the odds. But she knew there was only one way out. The only trail, the one that had brought their family the attention they used to shun, ran thirteen miles down the canyon, slicing through avalanche zones and criss-crossing the frozen creek until it reached a ghost town.
McCarthy was once a boom town of bootleggers and prostitutes. These days it was the only place in the Wrangell Mountains that could still be called a community, though a mere handful of settlers remained all winter. At first that isolation had been the attraction. The Pilgrim Family had traveled thousands of miles to reach the end of the road in Alaska. They had parked their trucks at the river and crossed a footbridge into town and continued on horseback and snowmachine and bulldozer and foot to their new home.
Now McCarthy burned in the girls’ imaginations not as the end of the road but as a beginning.
Psalms and Lamb and Abraham looked on in horror. Their big sisters weren’t even supposed to be speaking out loud. They had been put on silence. Yet here was Elishaba, calling out as she moved to and from the cabin, as if she no longer cared that they would report her.
Elishaba was the oldest of the fifteen brothers and sisters, a pretty, dark-eyed, dark-haired young woman, strong from a lifetime of homestead chores, from wrangling horses and hunting game - not a girl at all, at twenty-nine years, though she had never lived away from her family, never whispered secrets at a friend’s house or flirted with a boy. She had been raised in isolation, sheltered from the evil world - no television, no newspapers, no books, schooled only in survival and a dark exegesis of God’s portents. She was the special daughter, chosen according to the Bible’s solemn instruction. Her legal name was Butterfly Sunstar.
She gave the children a brave and reassuring smile. They could see now that she was weeping and frightened and that she did indeed still care. She cared about what would happen if she were caught. She was pretty sure she would not survive her punishment. But she also cared about how angry God might be if she succeeded and escaped into the world. all her life she had been taught that leaving would be the most forbidden sin. The punishment for that could turn out to be something infinitely worse.
Her sisters looked happy, though. Hosanna had found a spark plug. Perhaps their enterprise was favored after all. Jerusalem - short, blond and cherub-cheeked, at sixteen the second-oldest girl - had declared she would not let Elishaba go alone.
Elishaba and Jerusalem said swift goodbyes and climbed together on the little Tundra and lurched down the trail.
They made it no farther than the open snow in the first muskeg swamp. The snowmachine lurched to a stop. The fanbelt had snapped. Jerusalem used a wrench to pull the plug and started post-holing back up the frozen trail to the cabin. Elishaba tried to mend the belt with wire and pliers but gave up.
She looked about for an escape route. The snow was too deep to flounder through, the trees too far away. It felt like one of those dreams where she tried to run for her life and she couldn’t move. She sat listening for the sound of a snowmachine returning up the valley from town.
Instead she heard Jerusalem coming on the other Tundra.
They reloaded their gear and started off again. A pinhole in the fuel line was spewing gasoline but if this too was a sign it went unseen. They flew too fast around a curve and nearly hit a tree and slowed down.
Jerusalem, holding on in back, started crying now too. She was thinking about all they were leaving behind. In modern Alaska, with its four-lane highways and shopping malls, her family was famous, recognized wherever they went. People cheered when the Pilgrim Family Minstrels performed on stage. They always made a beautiful picture.
The sisters prayed out loud. Where the snow-packed trail turned uphill, they stopped and listened. The world was heavy with silence. They started again and worked hard climbing. At the top they discovered the family’s other new snowmachine, hidden in trees too far from the cabin for anyone on foot to find it. The sisters hesitated. They talked about switching but the old Tundra was running well so they decided to continue but right there the engine died and that’s when they discovered the fuel leak. Maybe the Lord was indeed helping them, they said. They felt a surge of hope as they transferred their gear and continued on the third snowmachine.
There was so much about the world the sisters did not know. Only lately had they realized how difficult the future would be because of this. But there were things they knew about the world as it once was and these were skills they needed now. Where the trail climbed over the riverbank, Elishaba veered away behind the snowy berm, so that someone coming the other way might not notice their track. She drove into the spruce trees and shut down. They could see the trail through the boughs. The telltale smell of two-cycle exhaust lingered in the still cold air. They pulled the two white sheets over themselves in the snow.
The faint whine of a snowmachine, growing louder, was coming up the valley.
