Chris McCandless's younger sister Carine "looks enough like him that people frequently asked if they were twins". She is "energetic and self-assured", and, like Chris, "clashed fiercely" with her father and mother as an adolescent. Carine eventually made peace with her parents, however, And although she "shares Chris's outrage over racial injustice", she has no objection to the pursuit of wealth. Chris lives in a nice Virginia Beach home with her husband, Chris Fish, and Buckley, the Shetland sheepdog her brother so loved.
It was Chris Fish who told Carine that her brother had been found dead. When Chris McCandless's identity had been confirmed through dental records, Carine and Walt McCandless's oldest son Sam went down to Fairbanks to bring back their brother's remains. They were given Chris McCandless's ashes in a plastic box, with a label on which his name was spelled incorrectly.
Chris and Carine McCandless had been "uncommonly close". In a letter describing his conflicts with his parents, Chris once wrote to Carine that she was "the only one in the world who could possibly understand what (he was) saying". Her brother's death left a huge void in Carine's life, and, ten months later, she still "grieves deeply". Their mother, Billie, too, has been acutely affected by the loss of her son, and still cries frequently, saying, "I just don't understand it at all" (Chapter 13).
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