The eldest daughter of Papa Pilgrim shared her story of survival. Now, she faces a new battle: Brain cancer

Note to readers: This story contains references to physical and sexual abuse. Elishaba Doerksen is again fighting for her life. It has been nearly two decades since the day she escaped her family’s isolated homestead in Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, gunning a snowmachine away from a life of tyrannical abuse at the hands of her father, Robert Hale, known as Papa Pilgrim. She survived that, and what came after — facing life as a 29-year-old who’d received almost no formal education; the criminal case against her father,...