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From the moment Cassandra Pybus first heard about Lillian Alling’s trek across North America, she couldn’t get the story out of her mind. This is how it went: Desperate with homesickness, Lillian Alling, a recent immigrant to the United States from the Soviet Union, haunted the New York Public Library, studying the atlas to establish the most direct route home to her native Russia. Her English was poor but she understood the hieroglyphics of cartography. In the spring of 1927, aided only by a hand-drawn map, she started to walk home. Pybus searched for clues about this enigmatic pedestrian. When her historical sleuthing yielded little, she set out on her own trek to trace Lillian’s route through the wilderness of northwestern Canada and subarctic Alaska and Siberia. The result is an entertaining travel narrative that pieces together Alling’s journey through the natural beauty and rich history of northwestern North America — a story never before told.
Australian writer Pybus takes a fitful journey through Canada and Alaska to follow in the footsteps of Lillian Alling, a Russian woman who, in 1927, walked from New York City to British Columbia, thinking that she could reach Siberia. What little Pybus knows about this compulsive pedestrian comes from vague newspaper clippings that describe her as nearly mute, emaciated and resembling a haunted person. Imbued with curiosity and kinship for her elusive quarry, Pybus sets out with her traveling companion, Gerry, a robust and prickly fellow Aussie, on a kind of feminist adventure. A cross between Thelma and Louise and the Two Fat Ladies, the two drive for hours on perilous roads, lodge in freezing cabins and spend a lot of time arguing mostly about food, the aspects of which (starvation, bulimia, nutrition and guilt) become a recurrent theme. The scenes with Gerry add spark to Pybus's often hopeless wild goose chase, and when they part ways, Gerry's sass is missed. However, in the face of constant disappointment and dead-ends, Pybus turns her attention to the world around her for inspiration, and her accounts of bear sightings, salmon spawning and weather patterns, along with her keen social interest in the logging and hunting industries create a textured portrait of a dazzling, dangerous landscape. In the end, a few small developments surface to add insight and meaning to Alling's trek, but the real journey is Pybus's, as she is a lively and likable wanderer. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Bruno Sakowicz
reviewed The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend on November 20, 2013
The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend
I was disappointed with the book, if the author had made a story of a quest located in a beautiful location (BC, Yukon Territory and Alaska) it would be a beautiful work.
Instead I read a bitter, friendship destroying, bleeding heart criticism of the way of life in a difficult land.
Her friend Gerry, who accompanies her on the trip is made out to be a one-sided, junk food eating monster, who, even after she leaves the book, is criticized for being who she is. The criticisms are so clear and bitter, gosh Cassandra, no wonder YOU didn't enjoy spending time with Gerry. I can't help but think that I wouldn't get along with your self-righteous, "holier-than-thou" ass either.
Pg. 160:
"The trip was always going to be determined by my priorities and shaped by my intellectual concerns, by my compulsive need to share my research. I was quite the wrong kind of person to be traveling with a woman desperate to be on the underside of forty. For Gerry to find herself with a travel companion who was over fifty, unconcerned about her body image and unable to resist turning everything into an object lesson, must have been more than she could bear.
Too bad for Gerry.
I actually LIKE being over fifty."
Yay, good for you Cassandra! Congratulations on your age, all of the places that you have traveled to and the things that you have experienced. Obviously you are your own unique snowflake.
The author's general distaste for all hunters, regardless of media, is clearly ignorant. State (small and large) laws have been thought out, there is a process, clearly there are regulations and departments of fish and wildlife know their numbers and that clearly the "circle of life" needs to happen. Such odd remarks in this book.
Pg. 208; in regard to the hunters in Alaska:
"Many have wives standing guard beside the empty pickup, gun in hand. We pass one woman on her knees, probably praying that her husband can bag them a moose. America is a deeply religious country."
Huh.
Pybus, two things. One, an American Marine Officer is ALWAYS a Marine, regardless if they are actively separated or not and the Marine corp in the states is NOT the US Army.
If Americans have difficulty making such a distinction, then an Australian who thinks extremely highly of herself wouldn't either. Whoops, there goes a good amount of research.
So, after all is said and done, my last bit is with the author's clear boredom with her subject. After tying the loose ends together, she arrives home in Australia, happy to see her husband again but without finding any descendants.
Good on ya Cass, way to see it through to the end.
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Add The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend, From the moment Cassandra Pybus first heard about Lillian Alling's trek across North America, she couldn't get the story out of her mind. This is how it went: Desperate with homesickness, Lillian Alling, a recent immigrant to the United States from the So, The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend to the inventory that you are selling on WonderClubX
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Add The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend, From the moment Cassandra Pybus first heard about Lillian Alling's trek across North America, she couldn't get the story out of her mind. This is how it went: Desperate with homesickness, Lillian Alling, a recent immigrant to the United States from the So, The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend to your collection on WonderClub |
