Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier

I have long been fascinated with Alaska as the true last frontier of America. I became interested in McCarthy, Alaska, after watching an episode of The Edge of Alaska. Even though it was a reality show, parts of it were informative, including living a more simplistic, off the grid lifestyle in Alaska This particular book brings much more authentic history into play as well as bringing forth the tragic story of a family gone totally off the trails in an attempt to find God and the meaning of life at the hands of a maniacal father. I wish nothing but the best for the remaining members of the family and pray they find peace. Both the historical nature of this book as well as the story telling of the family are well worth the read.

I am fascinated by mountain people and other wilderness types, also by mountain and hillbilly music. But what really hooked me was that the main character in this book is the former husband of John Connally's (Texas Governor, Secretary of the Navy and Treasury, etc...) daughter. Connally's pregnant teenage daughter Kathleen died from a shotgun blast after running off with Robert (Bobby) Hale. Bobby was not indicted, though the death was very suspicious.Bobby later became known as Papa Pilgrim and a few other names. He went through a sixties hippie phase and then found religion (or at least his brand of religion). He said he was destined to father twenty-one children. He fathered four before his religion phase, then fifteen after he went off the grid in New Mexico and Alaskan wilderness mountains. Counting a miscarriage and the child Kathleen Connally was carrying when she died, he reached his goal of twenty-one.Bobby is the son of I. B. Hale, a two time All-American football player for TCU, then first round draft pick for the Redskins. But he put aside football for the FBI, rising to be the head of the Dallas office and friend of J. Edgar Hoover. Bobby was schoolmates with singers John Deutschendorf (Denver), Shawn Phillips, and Delbert McClinton. And oh yes, Lee Harvey Oswald, the guy who shot Bobby's future father-in-law. Bobby and his twin were also later arrested for burglarizing the apartment of Judith Campbell, one of John Kennedy's women friends. The author takes great pains to only report facts he has researched thoroughly. No conspiracy theories here.But this book is not really about that. It focuses on the years the Pilgrims spent in the Alaskan Wilderness in a little almost-ghost town of McCarthy (John Denver filmed a movie there in 1975), and the Pilgrims' fights with the National Park Service. Papa wanted his welfare checks, but no government interference.I was a little put off by the meanderings through time in this book and the frequent flashbacks that seemed to interrupt the story flow. But it's still worth your time.I am also fascinated by narcissists and Pilgrim's tendency to take both sides of the same issue and to use religion to justify evil deeds is a narcissistic trait. The family at one point was on the threshold of hitting it big with their music, but the father's deranged behavior ended that. Robert Pilgrim asked the question that I kept asking as I read, "If my children look good, talk good, are good, well then how did they get to be good, if their father is so evil? Can a thorn bush bear oranges?" [...]

PILGRIM'S WILDERNESS is about a large family of Christian fundamentalists who move near McCarthy, a former copper mining town in Alaska. The leader of the family called himself Papa Pilgrim, and he had 15 children.Pilgrim picked a contentious place to buy land (via the approximately two thousand dollars a head the state gave Alaskans in oil money), and his only way of getting supplies was to cross land that had been declared a national park. He built a road with a bulldozer a previous owner had left behind. The National Park Service was not happy; he wouldn't answer their efforts to communicate and turned back a ranger who had come to see him.McCarthy residents, sided with the Pilgrims. For one thing they were a family band who could pick it like Maybelle Carter and her clan. They got lots of publicity, especially from a local newspaper run by a fundamentalist preacher, who wasn't afraid to slant the issue.For one thing the National Park Service had to respect the interests of the inlanders, people who had settled the land prior to its being declared a national park. They were more or less grandfathered in. But they couldn't just let Pilgrim wreak havoc with the place or everybody would be doing it.Author Tom Kizzia was a reporter for an Anchorage newspaper and he covered the Pilgrim story from the word "go". Eventually he learned Pilgrim's real name was Robert Hale, son of a Texas Christian football all-American and agent for the CIA. Robert was the former husband of John Connelly's sixteen-year-old daughter who had committed suicide, suspiciously with a bullet behind the ear. He also learned about Hale's previous exploits near Taos, New Mexico, where he cut fences, grazed his animals on other people's land etc.The way Pilgrim treated his family will make your toes curl and you'll want to see him get his just desserts bad. But he used the Bible like a lawyer uses precedent, usually word-for-word. The reader can't quite figure out if Pilgrim is the real deal or a Charles Colson (see Watergate), David Berkowitz kind of Christian, using it as a cover. For one thing he forced his wife to call him "Lord" and he treated his children like an Old Testament God.As readers we also want to know how he got from transcendental meditation to fundamentalist Christianity. We also want to know when the social workers will come to the rescue and when the town will wake up and smell the coffee.

Fantastic product

after watching the program on sky discovery [ON THE LAST FRONTIER] I had to find out if there had been a book written ad was so pleased to find itit was a very good read

Kudos to Tom Kizzia for creating a fascinating, yet, horrific true story from his investigative reporting that reads like something from a top rated crime novelist. Mr. Kizzia keeps the story rolling from the very early years of the Hale clan until the final chapter with pace and crisp writing. My only "criticism" of this book is that once I began reading it, I realized pretty quickly I was going to read it right through until the end, hence, I was very tired the next day!!This book came to my attention as it was highly recommended by a national magazine I subscribe to as the 2013 "read of the summer"--I couldn't agree more.

A captivating and delightfully bizarre little piece of local history that I knew nothing about. I was thoroughly engrossed...and creeped out.

Thanx