The Wild Truth by Carine McCandless

I remember reading the original story about Chris McCandless in the 90s and being haunted by it, by this young man who had gone into the wild and never returned. I knew young men like that, who loved spending time in the wilderness of Alaska and the Pacific NW, intense people who rejected materialism and stayed up late to discuss ideas and literature and how following your dreams was the only way to be true to yourself. Later I read Into the Wild and even watched the movie. Naturally, I was fascinated when Chris’ younger sister, Carine, published a memoir.

I wasn’t the only one fascinated by Chris’ story. It got a lot of publicity, and many weighed in with their own opinions. While some understood, many others were critical, calling him arrogant, misguided, foolish, suicidal and more. People criticized Chris for leaving his family, for essentially not being in touch with them for 2 years before his untimely death on a deserted bus abandoned in the Alaskan wilderness, where he had managed to survive by hunting and gathering for several months. Now Carine has decided to weigh in with the truth about their family’s history.

The Wild Truth opens with an account of the McCandless parents, and the fact that Walt McCandless was basically maintaining 2 families at the time of Chris’ birth–one with his legitimate wife, and one with his mistress, Billie. He has 2 children born within 3 months of each other. Billie and Walt tried to keep this secret from the children, and Carine writes of being confused as to why she sometimes had more siblings than at other times. Although Walt had no intention of divorcing his first wife, she eventually divorced him, and Walt and Billie, along with Chris and Carine, moved to Washington, D.C.

Walt was a violent, abusive man, but Billie responded in anger herself and Carine writes of epic fights between the two of them, during which Chris was her protector. The two adults liked to create their own reality as much as possible, and would present a “perfect family” view to the outside, with an immaculate home and a husband working in the space industry and a wife who managed the paperwork and books and made it all possible. The family had plenty of money but very little peace. Chris was an intense young man who valued honesty and simplicity above all else. He read and thought a lot, and his decision to leave the family and make his own way into the world, proving himself in the wilderness, made sense to his younger sister, especially as she idolized him. Even his decision to include her in the 2 year silence as he made his way west and eventually north didn’t bother her. In Carine’s eyes, Chris could do no wrong. (I’m not saying he was wrong or not, just that this silence towards her as well as his parents made me wonder if they were as close as she thought, or wants to portray them as being). Naturally, his death was devastating to her.

Unlike Chris, Carine has been willing to give her parents chance after chance to be a part of her life, and in many ways they have been. They bailed her out financially many times, took her on trips to Europe and out for fancy dinners. Carine is frustrated that they won’t admit that things weren’t always perfect, that they may have contributed to the breakdown of the relationship. This book represents her decision to finally end things with them.

The Wild Truth spends the bulk of its time on the story of Carine’s life. She is in many ways Chris’ opposite. She left home at 18, married a violent man who was looking for a green card, divorced him, squandered her inheritance, never finished college. She started a successful auto-parts business, remarried, and ditched her second husband when he began to develop a drug habit. She remarried a third time, but that marriage, too, has ended. In part, I think, because her mother refused to leave her father even after often threatening to, Carine views leaving an imperfect marriage as being “strong.” Carine is the mother of 2 daughters, one biological and the other the child of her 3rd husband. She seems a loving, caring mother.

This memoir doesn’t really tell much more of Chris’ story. Rather, it explains his family a bit more, and tell us of how they’ve managed without him. If you were fascinated by Into the Wild and want to learn more about his background, or if you enjoy memoirs about those touched by tragedy, you’ll enjoy this book.