Fascinating!

I was looking for a different type of book to read, and I certainly found it when I read Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier by Tom Kizzia.

Tom Kizzia is an Alaskan writer who became acquainted with this strange family.  Because he had a cabin near theirs, he was given greater access to the inner workings of this family than any other person.  Even then, there was much that Mr. Kizzia didn't know about the man called Papa Pilgrim.

On the surface, they looked like an old fashioned hillbilly type family.  However, Papa had many dark secrets, and beneath his exterior was a vicious man. 

This was an interesting story, fascinating, yet a very troubling and sad story.  There was almost too much detail about the family, but it was still interesting.  This family was controlled by Papa Pilgrim who used his Christianity to control and scare his family.  They moved to Alaska in a sense to hide out from the world, but they found trouble because of the father.

There was nothing really Christian about Papa Pilgrim in the way he abused his family and tried to strong arm anyone who would disagree with him. 

This was a well written book.

I was given a complimentary copy of this book free from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest opinion.