• true story.

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 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 cl 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 --------------------------------------- McCarthy 1983 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 Kennicott Valley 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 Blaine Family Band The Pilgrim Family Minstrels found fame in Alaska playing at music festivals and a CD.Here some of them performed in 2003 for visitors at their ain cabin in Alaska. Papa Pilgrim is at the right. (credit: Blaine Harden) Click here for a larger image