Not since “The Shining†has family life off the grid seemed as terrifying as it does in “Pilgrim’s Wilderness,†by Tom Kizzia, but this time the chills come from nonfiction. Mr. Kizzia tells the story of Robert Hale, a Texan who went on to call himself Papa Pilgrim as the patriarch of 15 children. Pilgrim eventually landed in Alaska on protected land, where several local allies adopted him as a heroic pioneer-antagonist of the National Park Service. Others bristled at Pilgrim’s self-styled messianism, and all the while his children suffered greatly under his rule. In a recent e-mail interview, Mr. Kizzia discussed whether he ever felt in danger while reporting the book, the keys that helped him unlock the full story and more. Below are edited xcerpts from the conversation:
What do you think kick-started Hale’s movement into full-blown eccentricity? Was there one moment that ordained the rest?
I couldn’t find an isolated “Rosebud†incident in his childhood. Hale himself said it was the suspicious death by shotgun of his teenage bride, the daughter of Texas politician John Connally, that started him on the “pilgrim†road leading finally to Alaska. But even before that, in the way he pried Kathleen Connally away from her family, you could see the charisma and narcissism that led him eventually to believe he was a messenger of God, helped along perhaps by copious amounts of LSD.
Were you reluctant to dig deeper into this story, given Hale’s personality? Did you ever feel in danger?
When I rode on horseback out to their wilderness homestead to spend the night, I didn’t ask every in-your-face question about his family that occurred to me. Was I scared? I told myself it was because I wanted him to be relaxed and keep talking for my newspaper story. I didn’t know about his violent side at that point â€" no one outside the family did. Later, after he got mad about my digging into his past, my wife was worried that our cabin near where the Pilgrim family lived might spontaneously combust.
When you began writing the book, did you already know about some of his darkest actions, or did you discover more along the way? And how did you approach writing some of the more graphic and disturbing scenes?
I knew about the whipping and the rapes, but not in the harrowing detail I would get from the investigative files. What I didn’t appreciate until later was the psychological torture â€" Papa Pilgrim’s ability to use the wrath of God to mold his children’s minds, absent any movies, books, friends or outside influences.
I believe in the power of restraint when writing emotionally difficult scenes. Also, because it was pretty much all they heard when they were growing up, the kids had this euphemistic King James Bible quality in the language they used to describe their plight, which I wanted to make use of.
What was the most unlikely source of help you got in piecing together the story for the book?
Probably when Papa himself, sitting in his wilderness cabin, handed me the key to unlocking his past. He told me he didn’t trust journalists because of the lies a reporter once wrote about his father. I got his father’s name and went searching on the Internet when I got back to town. It turned out the reporter was Seymour Hersh, the reporting was in his book about the Kennedy years, “The Dark Side of Camelot,†and suddenly I was tumbling down a rabbit hole into Hale’s Texas history.
Late in the book-writing process, Elishaba, the eldest daughter, decided to come forward and tell me her story in great detail. That changed the book; put her more toward the center, where she belonged, the tomboy hunter and guardian of her siblings, her father’s main victim and adversary.
How do “inholders†come to own land inside national parks? Is that something that happens all over the country?
Usually there were people on the land before the national parks came along, even across the American West. In general, the government has tried to move them out â€" peremptorily, in the case of many Native Americans, or gradually, with buyouts or eminent domain. In the Alaska lands act of 1980, Congress took a new approach. The rural wilderness lifestyle would be preserved along with the landscape, especially the subsistence hunting and fishing of Native Alaskans. The choice was part idealism and part political compromise.
Don Pitcher Tom KizziaOn a purely philosophical level, do you sympathize with any of the arguments embraced by landowners who took Hale’s side early on?
I do. We’re all inholders in nature, when you think about it. Alaska is an extreme metaphor for the idea of trying to live in balance with the world around us. But America has never been very good at harmonizing with wilderness. The frontier was always churning, advancing. So our literature is full of nostalgia for the generation that came before, when the land was a little wilder.
Have some of Hale’s early, fervent defenders apologized to you personally?
Heck, no. They think I should have come down even harder on the park rangers. I think some of them may have apologized to the children, for not seeing through to the reality beneath the pious pioneer facade.
Hale ranted against the government, but he also took advantage of dividends from the Alaska Permanent Fund. Did he ever try to square these things? How self-aware did he seem to you?
Alaska draws huge amounts of money from a federal government that we bash constantly for being oppressive. It’s not a contradiction that Alaskans in general choose to spend much time contemplating. On another level, Papa seems to have spent huge amounts of time trying to square the contradictions in his spiritual and family life. I suspect that’s what the heavily underlined and annotated Bibles were all about. When he was finally dragged into court and the judge asked his occupation, he said, “I’m a father.â€
Are you still in touch with any of the people in the book?
Almost all of them. The Hale family are recovering but have pulled back, somewhat, with publication of the book. A few of the older siblings sense how their story of escape and resilience can be helpful to other victims of abuse. It’s hard to imagine anyone being more isolated and cut off, physically and psychologically, than Elishaba and her sisters and brothers.
