Pilgrim's Wilderness

A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier

By: Tom Kizzia

Narrated by: Fred Sanders

Into the Wild meets Helter Skelter in this riveting true story of a modern-day homesteading family in the deepest reaches of the Alaskan wilderness – and of the chilling secrets of its maniacal, spellbinding patriarch.

When Papa Pilgrim appeared in the Alaska frontier outpost of McCarthy with his wife and fifteen children in tow, his new neighbors had little idea of the trouble to come. The Pilgrim Family presented themselves as a shining example of the homespun Christian ideal, with their proud piety and beautiful old-timey music, but their true story ran dark and deep. Within weeks, Papa had bulldozed a road through the mountains to the new family home at an abandoned copper mine, sparking a tense confrontation with the National Park Service and forcing his ghost town neighbors to take sides in an ever-more volatile battle over where a citizen’s rights end and the government’s power begins.

In Pilgrim’s Wilderness, veteran Alaska journalist Tom Kizzia unfolds the remarkable, at times harrowing, story of a charismatic spinner of American myths who was not what he seemed, the townspeople caught in his thrall, and the family he brought to the brink of ruin. As Kizzia discovered, Papa Pilgrim was in fact the son of a rich Texas family with ties to Hoover’s FBI and strange, oblique connections to the Kennedy assassination and the movie stars of Easy Rider. And as his fight with the government in Alaska grew more intense, the turmoil in his brood made it increasingly difficult to tell whether his children were messianic followers or hostages in desperate need of rescue. In this powerful piece of Americana, written with uncommon grace and high drama, Kizzia uses his unparalleled access to capture an era-defining clash between environmentalists and pioneers ignited by a mesmerizing sociopath who held a town and a family captive.

WOW!!!!

What a RIVETING story!! I have never experienced a story of this magnitude. I always choose intelligence building, or educational material to listen and learn. This is by far, one education, nobody will soon forget!!! WOW! Thank you for your journalism and writing abilities. Thank you for driving it home! 💯💯💯💯💯💯💯💯

Religiosity

I enjoyed the look into small town Alaska, but the level of delusion in this man's Narcissism was hard to hear.

Wow

Disturbing and unforgettable. This is a must read for those of you that like nonfiction.

More than one villain here

This is a story that needed to be told. The writing and narration are top notch.

The complacency of Pilgrim's wife as well as the willful ignorance of Jim Buckingham are unforgivable and damnable. Especially Buckingham, who's ex-Army as well as a graduate of both MIT and Stanford. What a piece of work this guy is.

I very much doubt that Jim's God would be pleased with his consistent looking-the-other-way when a father was raping his own daughter under his roof. Doubt Jim's God would approve of his not calling the authorities on a father who was clearly beating the crap out of his kids on a nightly basis. Jim is as much a Man of God as a toaster oven is. If there is a Hell....

Can't beat real life......

If you could sum up Pilgrim's Wilderness in three words, what would they be?

Unbelievable, Recent,Sad. I can't believe this happened so recently. It started out all about land rights and curved quickly to much more.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

That it is so true, that things are rarely what they appear to be.

Which scene was your favorite?

I loved the connection to Governor Connolly, Jack Nicholson, Lee Harvey Oswald, etc. It was pure fascination.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. I needed breaks to absorb all I had read.

Any additional comments?

This was like watching a train wreck. Heartbreaking.