Official Review: Impossible Beyond This Point by Joel Horn

[JennyS]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Impossible Beyond This Point" by Joel Horn.]

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Non-fiction is not always my first choice of reading material, but I have always enjoyed a good tale of survival and living off the land. Impossible Beyond This Point by Virgil, Marcella, and Joel Horn fits the bill perfectly, simultaneously entertaining and informative, full of knowledge without being so technical that the average reader can’t follow along. The narrative is an amalgamation of Virgil Horn’s 1972 unpublished manuscript Hooray the Wilderness, Marcella Horn’s 1997 self-published book We Walked the Tall Grass, and Joel Horn’s recollections mixed in with technical details, converted to third person and with dialogue added. It tells the true tale of two brave parents (Virgil and Marcella) who bought a claim to a gold mine in the Northern California mountains and, in 1967, moved their three young boys, ages 8 (Gaines), 6 (Kelly), and 4 (Joel), to live off the land and find “independence, dignity, and contentment.”

In days when the people are demanding more and more from their government and yet decrying their children for making the same demands on them; when, for a large part of the people, the greatest goal is an easy job or total government support; when that same government tries to be all things to all people at whatever cost; then someone has to reassert the evident truth, that the individual is the basis for a free society.

It is for this reason that we have come to the wilderness and through continuing hard work and enterprise show that the American dream of freedom of the individual is worth much more than the security of the masses.
- Virgil Horn, 1972

This epigraph by the father, Virgil Horn, helps to explain the reasoning for their extreme decision to move (the parents and small children previously lived in Sylmar, in Southern California near Los Angeles) from “a comfortable city routine, where they had firemen, policemen, streetlights, libraries, gasoline stations and friends” to an “unknown, unprotected, isolated wilderness” where their only neighbor for more than 10 square miles was a crazy old hermit who didn’t like strangers and often accused the Horns of trying to kill him. Virgil’s quote also sets the theme shown throughout the book, and behind every action the family makes, that of independence, peace, and happiness of their own accord and on their own terms. The family motto, “total responsibility is total freedom,” breathes throughout every chapter.

Both parents said they “wanted their sons to have a life free of fear.” They may not have had the same fears and insecurities that come from trying to live up to society’s expectations, but they certainly traded them for what some people would consider nightmares—the fear of starving, wild animals, getting hurt, or freezing to death! Though all of these concerns are very real, and are encountered multiple times over the years, the family is able to use every resource at their disposal to overcome each hurdle. They truly show Nature as both a nurturing provider and “an enemy to subdue,” as well as constantly demonstrating that necessity is the mother of invention, as they have to make everything from scratch—growing, harvesting, and butchering their own food, creating wood-working and gold-mining machines from just parts carried on their backs, and even building a water-powered generator for (limited) electricity!

The writing is descriptive, with beautiful imagery, and has been pieced together to give the best feel of the family’s experience without ever dragging on or becoming tedious. In places the series of loosely connected stories are not perfectly linear, there are a few copyediting misses, and the timeline is not always perfect, but the anecdotes relate well to one another and there are no glaring errors or lapses. Being non-fiction, there is no direct plot or story arc but there is always something happening—often exhilarating, humorous, or both—and that kept me thoroughly immersed. There are also a few pictures at the end of each chapter that add rich detail for the reader’s imagination of the Horns’ reality.

The majority of the story details only the first 15 or so years of the accomplishment of their dream, with a few more moments leading up to 1988, but the real-life adventure spans several more decades and even continues today! As I read the last words of the book, I didn’t want to leave the mountains or the determined and impressive Horn family. I would have loved an epilogue to answer even a few left-dangling questions—are Marcella and Virgil still living there? Do any of the boys live with their parents? Did any of them leave and return? Basically, what has happened in the past 26 years??—but I am glad I got even the glimpse I did into their extraordinary (though I doubt they would describe themselves that way) yet simple and uncomplicated lives.

This story resonated even more for me because, about a decade after the Horns moved down to their Flat, my newlywed parents (Southern California flatlanders themselves) decided to move up to the mountains above Lake Tahoe and build their own log cabin with their own hands. I wasn’t yet born when they began and was too young to remember any of that struggle—my earliest memory is of a snug house with a great wood-stove fire pit and LOTS of snow—but I grew up reading Little House on the Prairie, My Side of the Mountain, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and later, as I grew older, the Earth’s Children series by Jean M. Auel. Readers who have enjoyed these and similar books will love this one. The three children in Impossible Beyond This Point grew up living the same lessons I personally have only read about. In the note from Joel, he says that “the biggest gift [visitors] gave us is the knowledge that people are really good.” I agree, and I encourage you good people to read this book. I give it 4 out of 4 stars.

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[Kappy]

Good review. I also read a lot of non-fiction books. This sounds like a fascinating adventure. But this book isn't for me; I am strongly opposed to butchering animals for food.