Book review: A road trip from New York to Alaska reveals beauty and healing to a reluctant traveler

“From the darkness”

By Marian Elliott; Cirque Press, 2024; 303 pages; $15.

A woman suffers the loss of her 19-year-old son and falls into a nearly crippling depression. Her husband leaves their home in Long Island, New York, and moves to Florida, forbidding her from accompanying him. He insists that she visit relatives who teach in Toksook Bay, Alaska, and buys a trailer for the trip. Accompanied by her son’s old German shepherd-collie mix, she sets off on a road trip, unsure where or how far to go, and really only wants to be with her husband in Florida.

This is the disturbing beginning of a story called a memoir, narrated by Wasilla resident Marian Elliott. Memoirs typically use an “I” to tell a true story, but in “Out of the Dark” there is a main character named Jeanne, who appears to stand in for the author. (To avoid confusion, the book could also have been called an autobiographical novel, based on the author’s life but with the freedom to change identities and use details and conversations to suit the needs of the story. There are other differences between memoir and fiction, but the author must have had her reasons for choosing the third-person perspective.)

In any case, Elliott has told a compelling story from multiple points of view. The first third of the book revolves around the tragedy of losing a child in a senseless accident, the family’s inability to talk about the young man or his death, and the failing marriage. (As Jeanne learns when she finally attends a grief group, most marriages fall apart after such a tragedy.) Jeanne suffers emotional and mental anguish, made worse by her husband baselessly blaming her for the death and otherwise undermining her sense of reality. He proves himself a master of gaslighting and manipulation: “Do you have any idea how lucky you are? I know people who would give anything to go to Alaska. I wish I could go.”

Much of the rest of the book is essentially a road trip, as Jeanne and the dog Gulliver, to whom she is very attached, travel together. Starting in September, they travel for the first time in a region she really wants to visit—the Canadian Maritime Provinces. She seeks out ocean views and other restful places. A single woman with an old dog attracts attention, and she readily makes friends with other campers, local residents, and a philosophical hitchhiker who asks, “Have you ever wondered if you would recognize yourself if you met yourself on the road in a strange place?” It was 1980, and her own confidence and kindness seemed to invite those of others. She meets the same travelers again and again, accepts invitations to visit others in their homes, and keeps up correspondence for months and perhaps years afterward. When she mentions Alaska, some she meets are excited by the idea, but most raise eyebrows, especially about heading north so late in the season. Toksook Bay? She herself does not seem to know that the Yup’ik village is not simply located in “Alaska,” but on an island far to the west, across the Bering Sea.

Halfway through the book, three weeks after leaving home, she is adamant about not going on to Alaska. “She had to make it clear to Gary (her husband) that the Alaska trip was not going to happen.” But after a stop at her daughter’s college near Buffalo, NY, her husband demands in a phone call that she continue on to Alaska, and she agrees to drive as far as the Canadian Rockies.

After this, time on the road and in the narrative speeds up considerably. Jeanne learns that her husband has another woman in Florida – something readers might have guessed much earlier. “She saw no choice but to keep driving. Why not keep driving until she made up her mind? Who knew what the road had in store?” She drives up the Alaska Highway, where she runs out of gas and is rescued by kind men. She drives through blizzards where there is no daylight. In Whitehorse, the dog has a medical emergency, other kind people help her, and she rushes on to Fairbanks to reach a veterinarian.

If I were to tell more of the story, it would be too much, but suffice it to say that the old dog’s condition keeps Jeanne in Alaska until spring. She actually arrives in Toksook Bay and is surprised by the small plane, the numerous stops in and around Bethel, and the request of her relatives to bring a box of fruit and vegetables.

During her travels, even though she still mourns the loss of her son, Jeanne finds much love in the world, in people and in nature. When a raven flies overhead in the silence of British Columbia, the woman from New York is amazed to hear the sound of bird wings for the first time in her life. Later, she is fascinated by the song and sight of a dipper “following the bend of the stream just above the surface of the water. It settled downstream on a boulder and, as the rippling water rushed around it, sang again an exuberant medley of whistles and trills.”

Ultimately, Out of the Dark is a story of trust, self-discovery, and healing. The journey with Jeanne/Elliott is not just a road trip marked by the kindness of strangers; readers will also enjoy the company of a traveler who is growing into the self she actually enjoys recognizing.

(Book review: A reluctant memoirist reflects on a tragic family story – and ponders forgiveness)

(Book review: Jennifer Brice’s intimate and creative essays show her sharp mind at work)

(Book Review: Captivating memoir reveals lifelong lessons from a teacher’s time in an Alaskan village)