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
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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