When the squadron leader gave the signal, we hurried forward, crouching and firing, trying to get to an overturned cable spool where we could find cover. Or I should say they were firing, the other guys on my team. They were plugging away, spraying the field with ordinance, taking no…
Read moreClark Kent is resigning from the Daily Planet. Times have changed and Kent doesn’t appreciate the tabloid-like direction the paper is taking. He plans to become an independent journalist and blogger. Let me be the first to welcome him to the club. As earth shaking developments in the Superman saga…
Read moreThe United States today is a country of two different people, liberals and conservatives. The partisan divide is stark and unnerving. But at bottom what exactly is it that divides us? The best definition I’ve heard comes from libertarian essayist P.J. O’Rourke who said, “Conservatives fear the government more than…
Read moreSometime around 10:30am on the morning of Saturday, November 12th, 2011, a 24-year-old Danvers, Massachusetts man knocked on his neighbor’s door. When the neighbor opened the door, the man took the cat he was carrying under his arm and tossed it into the neighbor’s house. Startled, the neighbor asked him…
Read moreHere’s a tip for any would-be hikers out there. Don’t trust the Internet. The trouble is anyone can post anything on the Internet, and if it meets the criteria of Google’s algorithm it can be driven to the top of the search engine rankings, laying in wait like a coiled…
Read moreWhen I was a boy of about nine I had a sexual awakening. A friend and I were wandering along a rural road, kicking cans, throwing stones and inspecting the debris along the roadside, when we came upon a pile of discarded magazines. It was quite a find. Those magazines…
Read moreJust after 4:00 in the morning of April 15th, 1865 two men appeared on horseback at the home of Dr. Samuel Mudd near present day Waldorf, Maryland. One man was suffering a broken leg and needed help. Dr. Mudd helped the injured man into his home, cut away his boot…
Read moreDeath from spinal fracture was the final verdict for Otto Lilienthal. Displaying a heady mixture of audacity and ingenuity, Lilienthal, a German engineer, had developed a heavier than air glider, flown it several times, tweaked its design and was working on a way to power it when the accident occurred. …
Read moreI like to watch the Amazing Race. It’s one of my favorite shows. With each new episode the show’s producers must find interesting and compelling new challenges for the race’s contestants, tests of grit and fortitude that have included everything from diving off a 30-foot platform into frigid water to…
Read moreWhen they came to Wirz with the offer, he refused them. He was not a man to play games. He had already told them he knew nothing that would implicate President Jefferson Davis in the calamity that was Andersonville, but they kept pressing him, thinking he would crack, thinking he…
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Pilgrim’s Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier by Tom Kizzia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The question of what to do when a child is lured into a cult is hard enough, but the issue becomes even more complicated when the cult is actually the child’s family and the cult leader is the child’s father. The complications deepen when the cult leader and his family are elevated to the status of a cause celebre by anti-government groups fighting the US Park Service in a remote corner of Alaska…
