Pilgrim's wilderness A true story of faith and madness on the Alaska Frontier

This strong work of reportage starts in 2002, when Papa Pilgrim, his wife, and 14 kids buy a 420-acre mining claim embedded in Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Papa bulldozes a 13-mile road through the park to tiny McCarthy, and land-rights groups stick with the Pilgrims even when it is revealed that Papa is Robert Hale, born and raised in upper-class Fort Worth. Hale was the only witness when his pregnant high-school girlfriend, daughter of future governor John Connally, shot herself in the back of the head with a fingerprint-free shotgun. Hale's life brimmed with bizarre murkiness named in an FBI file on JFK; his mother helping Lee Harvey Oswald get work; squatting for 20 years on Jack Nicholson's New Mexico ranch; and hints of a dinner with Charles Manson. In Alaska, it turns out that for decades Hale has used physical, mental, and sexual abuse to brainwash his whole family. His intriguing past crumbles in comparison to his excruciating cruelty and to the inspiring grace and strength of his children.--Carr, Dane Copyright 2010 Booklist

In 2002, when the Pilgrim family, a curious group that included a husband and wife and 14 children, showed up in remote McCarthy, Ala., and homesteaded in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, their pioneer spirit, independent nature, religious piety, and throwback ideals were embraced by the frontier community. When the family got into a legal battle with the National Park Service, many Alaskans who bristled at the government's perceived infringement on landowners' rights came to the family's aid. But when journalist Kizzia (The Wake of the Unseen Object) started digging into the Pilgrims'' past-especially that of the father, Papa Pilgrim (aka Bobby Hale)-for the Anchorage Daily News, he uncovered a bizarre saga. Following Hale's journey from Texas to Alaska, which included stops in Florida, California, Oregon, and New Mexico-and names like John F. Kennedy, Jack Nicholson, J. Edgar Hoover, and Texas Governor John Connally-Kizzia discovers cracks in the paradisiac image the Pilgrim's presented to the public. Though it takes a little while for him to set up the story, once Papa Pilgrim's dark secrets start to become exposed (there are battles between the National Park Service, the government and various small towns), the author sends readers on a roller-coaster ride that is as thrilling as it is shocking. Kizzia's work is a testament to both the cruelty and resiliency of the human spirit, capturing the sort of life-and-death struggle that can only occur on the fringes of modern-day civilization. Agent: Alice Martell, the Martell Agency. B&w photos. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

A journalist's gripping account of a modern fundamentalist Christian pioneer family and the dark secrets that held it together. Robert "Papa Pilgrim" Hale, his wife and 15 children came to the remote little town of McCarthy, Alaska, convinced that it was God's will they settle there. Claiming that he and his family wanted nothing more than "to live our old-time way and be left in peace," Pilgrim bought privately owned acreage that happened to be surrounded by lands managed by the National Park Service. McCarthy residents fell in love with the idealistic, God-fearing family members and marveled at how they "could light up any space" with their idiosyncratic brand of American roots music. But when Papa Pilgrim decided to clear a road that ran on public land to the property he christened Hillbilly Heaven, residents became enmeshed in a bitter battle that ensued between their neighbors and the Park Service. On assignment from his newspaper, Kizzia (The Wake of the Unseen Object: Travels Through Alaska's Native Landscapes, 1998) successfully solicited the media-wary Pilgrim for an interview. What he learned--that Pilgrim was the son of a rich Texas family with links to the FBI--was only a small part of the whole story, which came out only after Pilgrim's eldest children ran away from home. The real Papa Pilgrim was a deluded megalomaniac who physically and emotionally brutalized his wife and children. He was also a sexual deviant who coerced his eldest daughter, Elishaba, "to keep his flesh working" so that he could bring forth the 21 children he believed God wanted him to have with Elishaba's mother. The horror at the heart of this story about religious extremism on the fringes of the last American frontier is slow to reveal itself, but when that horror fully emerges, it will swallow most readers. Provocative and disturbing.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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. Excerpted from Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier by Tom Kizzia All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.