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From the #1 bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat comes an unforgettable epic of family, tragedy, and survival on the American frontier
“An ideal pairing of talent and material.… Engrossing.… A deft and ambitious storyteller.” – Mary Roach, New York Times Book Review
In April of 1846, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Graves, intent on a better future, set out west from Illinois with her new husband, her parents, and eight siblings. Seven months later, after joining a party of pioneers led by George Donner, they reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. In early December, starving and desperate, Sarah and fourteen others set out for California on snowshoes, and, over the next thirty-two days, endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors.
In this gripping narrative, New York Times bestselling author Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most legendary events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah’s journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.
- Sales Rank: #17527 in eBooks
- Published on: 2009-04-17
- Released on: 2009-04-28
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Booklist
The story of the ill-fated Donner party, a group of nineteenth-century settlers en route to California who became snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains and resorted to cannibalism to survive, remains an iconic moment in American history. Given the story’s inherent elements of horror and heroism, it is surprising that this account, told from the point of view of a young bride who survived the tragedy, is finally such an uninteresting book. Part of the problem is the author’s inability of incorporate his copious background material into the flow of the narrative (readers probably don’t need to know about 1840s-era birth-control methods). Even the author’s treatment of the tragedy itself, however, feels dully reportorial, without any of the you-are-there drama that Piers Paul Reid brough to Alive!, his account of history’s second-most-famous cannibalism-survival story, concerning the famous 1972 airplane crash in the Andes. So why bother with this Donner party treatment when so many other, more compelling works exist? The premise itself sets this book apart, and while it’s not handled particularly effectively, it will still interest those fascinated by the subject. --David Pitt
Review
“In this gripping narrative, Brown reveals the extremes of endurance that underlie the history of this nation, and more than that, of humanity in any part of the world, even today, surviving great peril in search of a better life.”
From the Back Cover
In April of 1846, Sarah Graves was twenty-one and in love with a young man who played the violin. But she was torn. Her mother, father, and eight siblings were about to disappear over the western horizon forever, bound for California. Sarah could not bear to see them go out of her life, and so days before the planned departure she married the young man with the violin, and the two of them threw their lot in with the rest of Sarah's family. On April 12, they rolled out of the yard of their homestead in three ox-drawn wagons.
Seven months later, after joining a party of emigrants led by George Donner, Sarah and her family arrived at Truckee Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains just as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. After a series of desperate attempts to cross the mountains, the party improvised cabins and slaughtered what remained of their emaciated livestock. By early December they were beginning to starve.
Sarah's father, a Vermonter, was the only member of the party familiar with snowshoes. Under his instruction, fifteen sets of snowshoes were hastily constructed from oxbows and rawhide, and on December 15, Sarah and fourteen other relatively young, healthy people set out for California on foot, hoping to get relief for the others. Over the next thirty-two days they endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors.
In this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown takes the reader along on every painful footstep of Sarah's journey. Along the way, he weaves into the story revealing insights garnered from a variety of modern scientific perspectives–psychology, physiology, forensics, and archaeology–producing a tale that is not only spell-binding but richly informative.
Most helpful customer reviews
115 of 120 people found the following review helpful.
Magnificient!
By B. McEwan
This history of the (in)famous Donner party alternately reads like a thriller, a horror story, a nature study and pure poetry. Author Daniel James Brown really did his homework, actually tracing the route taken by a young woman named Sarah Graves Fosdick as she trekked across the American West with her new husband, seeking a homestead in California.
Taken in by an opportunist named Lansford Hastings, who wanted to make a name for himself (not to mention some quick cash) by routing Westward-heading emigrants through what he called his "shortcut," the several families of the Donner party made a fateful decision to heed Hastings' advice and follow his unproven route through the Sierra Nevada mountains. This was, as history shows, their undoing, as they became stranded throughout the winter in 20+ feet of snow, with no food and minimal shelter.
After several failed attempts, Sarah Graves and some of her companions managed to escape through what is now called the Donner Pass, but not until many members of the party had died and the survivors had been reduced to cannibalizing the bodies of their relatives and friends.
Brown relates the whole story, beginning with the departure of Sarah and her family from their home in Illinois through her death at the age of 46 in what is now known as California's Napa Valley. In doing so, he writes with sensitivity and compassion, inviting readers to imagine both Sarah's joy during the first half of her journey and the deep grief she must have felt throughout the remainder of her life once she finally reached California. At no point does Brown stoop to judging the people whose story he relates, nor does he sugar-coat the events of their tragic situation. Thus, some portions of the book are difficult to read, but for me the revulsion I occasionally felt was worth the reward of coming to a better understanding of the grit and heroism displayed by our ancestors who crossed the continent at a time when life on the road often meant living the equivalent of a stone age existence.
I admire the fact that Brown himself visited places along Sarah's route, walking through chest-high prairie grass (loaded with ticks), climbing a "slope" in the Wasatch Mountains (7,500 feet above sea level) and slogging a mile across Utah's salt flats ("My God, I thought, those people were tough!")
Brown writes beautifully and portions of the book read like poetry. Take, for example, this passage -- "To really understand [Sarah's] story, I knew I would have to travel farther than just the sixteen hundred miles that lay between me and California. I would have to travel into the heart of a girl who was a product of a vanished world...a girl who encountered in her life challenges more daunting and tragedies more profound than I have ever begun to confront in my own."
And that is, for me, exactly what Brown has managed to do in The Indifferent Stars Above. Read this book.
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Enthralling
By debeehr
Daniel James Brown's account of the Donner party disaster is a riveting retelling of this ill-fated journey. He has done copious research, not only on the Donner party itself, but on the physical, emotional and psychological effects of prolonged starvation and exposure, and manages to weave it all into a fascinating narrative. He presents his material so vividly I almost felt as if I were there seeing it all firsthand. His choice to follow Sarah Foster's journey, both through his book and actually physically in taking a driving trip overland, was a wise one. The sympathetic portrait he paints of this young woman, scarcely out of her teens yet faced with more horrific, agonizing decisions than most people experience in a lifetime, gives the book a center and an immediacy that it otherwise might have lacked. Definitely this is going to become must-reading for all those interested in the fate of the Donner Party.
41 of 44 people found the following review helpful.
The Herorics of Survival
By Betty L. Sheldon
"I think I'd rather die than resort to what the Donner Party members did to survive their 'death march' across the California Sierra Nevada mountains!" I exclaimed as I finished reading, The Indifferent Stars Above, by Daniel James Brown. My reaction shows, that given these pioneers' circumstances, nobody knows what they would actually do in a similar situation. It's a wonder any of the survivers kept their sanity!
Author Brown shows his deep interest throughout the narrative by his very careful research, and his actual trek over the same route the Donner Party followed. No doubt his distant ancestor, Sarah, provided high motivation for him.
This version of the epic-making experience of the Donner Porty interested me greatly, because I had lived in some of the places Brown mentioned in his narrative.
If you enjoy history, because it is his-story, her-story, their-story, this book is an excellent read. Brace yourself, though, it is not a good bedtime story!
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