The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend [Paperback]

Cassandra Pybus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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. Map.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The legend of Lillian Alling, a 1920s Russian immigrant so homesick that she walked from New York to Siberia, would catch the imagination of even the most hardened skeptic. Few, however, could extract as cohesive a story out of this heretofore shadowy tale of the Canadian Northwest as skillfully as award-winning Australian historian Pybus. Immigration archives on the East Coast prove inconclusive, so she gathers her forces, grants, and friends and journeys through the still dangerous Canadian wilderness where there were documented sightings of Lillian. Pybus starts out with a traveling companion, but they break up. Then, while clues to Lillian are scarce, the journey itself becomes the essence of the tale, clarifying what is important and valuable in the writer's own life. Along the way, Pybus encounters extraordinary scenery, remarkable people, and a surprising string of archives in the most unlikely places, but no plausible basis for the story until she heads for home. In the end, this is an engrossing chronicle of journeys--physical, emotional, and intellectual. Danise Hoover
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows (December 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568582900
• ISBN-13: 978-1568582900
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,269,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A major disappointment., June 29, 2005

By 

Nicole C "englishlitstudies" (midwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend (Paperback)

Pybus purportedly is writing about a woman who, in the 1920's, set out to walk from British Columbia all the way to Siberia. There isn't much information on this woman and Pybus, with a friend, was going to retrace her steps in an effort to find out more.
That sounds really good. That is why I picked up the book to read it.
What most of this book is about, though, is how mean Cassandra's friend is to her, how too many people are hunting Alaskan moose, how backwards Americans are, how nice Cassandra is. There is finally a resolution to the "woman who walked to Russia" story but it's only thrown in in a halfhearted way before Pybus throws her whole self into telling us how happy she is to be back with her husband, and that's what really matters, right? If she had spent more time being sympathetic the first 3/4 of the book I could have been happier with the ending. As it was, I was completely uninterested in Cassandra's personal life, having been given regular doses of it throughout the book.
There are some good descriptions of Yukon & Alaska in this book; it's an area I've visited before, and her descriptions made me miss it. I can get nostalgic without having to tread through 200 pages of complaining about Pybus's sad lot in life.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Missing Walker, March 4, 2008

By 

Dena (Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend (Paperback)

The woman of the title is nowhere to be found. If you are looking for wilderness adventure, as I was, you will be disappointed. Pybus has almost no information on Lillian Alling's life or supposed epic hike to Siberia. In fact, she doesn't even know her name. Lillian Alling is largely a guess. In the end, she finds a few tidbits and one first hand account and from that weaves a wispy fairy tale. What the reader finds instead is an often fascinating, if unintended self-portrait of the author -- a woman frightened by wilderness and unable to comprehend anything beyond her own limited and narrow world view. As when she mocks rural Americans or expresses "astonishment" that readers of Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild" see anything more than hubris in Krakauer's protagonist.

The interactions between her, her travel companion, and her thoughts along the way are mesmerizing, if often painful.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Woman Who Drove to Dawson, September 22, 2004

By 

Melvin Scott "MJS" (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer's Search for a Lost Legend (Paperback)

The least information supplied in this book is about Lillian (last name uncertain), the woman, whose legend has it, walked to Russia. The author is Australian, and that is probably the market for which this book is intended. She sets off on an investigative journal to uncover information about the mysterious Lillian, and comes up instead with a travelogue about travelling in Northern British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. Along the way, she fills in details of the scenery, the towns, her menu, her disfunctional friendship with her travelling companion, and offers a half dozen book reviews. For someone like myself, with a solid knowledge of North American current events and Arctic history, the narrative offers very little, and in fact, gives away important details some of books still waiting on my reading list. For others, who are looking for an introduction to the region, or enjoys another person's perspective, they may find some merit in the book. The writing style is fine, and the book does have flow to it. However, don't confuse it with investigative journalism.