"She wanted to tell every mother, every father: There is meaning in motion"

The idea of the 'Frontier' in literature is a well used and endlessly compelling device. From classic novels like O Pioneers and White Fang to contemporary science fiction and adventure writing the frontier is alive and well in popular culture. In Eggers' latest novel Heroes of the Frontier the role of the frontier is played by Alaska and is the setting for a unique family road-trip adventure.

Josie is a thirty-eight year old mum who packs up her two kids and sets off from Anchorage in a hired winnebago to rediscover some purpose in life after the breakdown of her relationship with the kids father, "His interest in them came and went, like his passion for economic equality or triathlons", and a pending lawsuit at her dental practice. Josie is strong and determined but ultimately lacking in an actual plan; an imaginative premise for an adventure steeped in despair and black humour.

Modern Alaska shines brilliantly as the wild frontier with Eggers' using an added wild fire to create a landscape of abandoned houses in which the family camp out. Whether Eggers' Alaska is really a utopian bastion of the American dream I don't know but I don't think this novel could be set anywhere else. 

Eggers' prose is accessible and fast paced which keeps the pages turning throughout. The plot is straight forward and simple but so full of empathy that the tension of life as a single parent is captured in every single moment; "The days were like this, each was miles long and had no aim or no possibility of regret".

Dave Eggers is a massively poplar writer with a distinct voice and personality as an author which for me is an important part of understanding any book. I read this book knowing about Eggers' own experience essentially raising his younger brother after the death of their parents. To that end its hard to distinguish where the narrative in the novel becomes the story of the author and the book is all the better for it. 

I read this novel on Kindle in part in the gardens outside Tate Modern's new Switch House. 

Heroes of the Frontier by Dave Eggers, published by Penguin, 400 pages