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The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party
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Original price was: $18.99.$11.49Current price is: $11.49.
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From the #1 bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat and Facing the Mountain 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.
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Categories: Women Writers
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The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party
Price:
Original price was: $18.99.$11.49Current price is: $11.49.
Christina D –
I really enjoyed reading this book. It was very informative and the author makes sure to vividly set the scenes including what was going on in the country at the time these events were taking place. Sometimes I found his descriptions to be a little long-winded and possibly unnecessary, but this was a very interesting book and I think the author did a really great job of painting the picture for the reader to imagine what the emigrants must have been experiencing during their grueling ordeal.
Dahlton Lang –
The writing style allows you to really immerse yourself in the 1800s. The book shifts from the narrators research, to letters and conversations, while beautifully describing the entire environment and providing personal details about the group members. Harrowing story! A must read!
Vince Reimer –
I’m uncertain. I was so troubled by the story that I put it on the shelf 60% read and haven’t picked it up again. Very well written, but a troubling story.
Udipt Guha –
A very detailed telling of one of the most extraordinary event of the triumph of the will over everything.Very sharply written
Gettysburg Girl –
Although the subject of The Donner Party sounds a little off-putting, I bought this book because Daniel James Brown is an outstanding writer and I loved another of his books, The Boys in the Boat (also a five star review from me). I was not disappointed with this one. Although it is a poignant story, Brown presents it in a way that is wonderfully compassionate and terrifically fascinating. He doesn’t dwell on the sorrowful, but somehow injects elements of hope and honor and heroism throughout. As he did in The Boys in the Boat, Brown focuses primarily on one person, Sarah Graves and her family, while also introducing many other persons and family groups. Thus, it is an immensely personal saga.
Much of the book describes the early part of the trek before they reach the Sierra Nevada’s. There are large groups of wagons heading westward and these various groups pass each other up again and again on the trail and often some join up with others, making the final composition of the families and individuals in a particular group a veritable crap-shoot by the time they begin to reach the mountains. When they must decide on how to proceed when the trail splits, a profiteering man urges them toward a short-cut toward Oregon even though he knows it is impassable for wagons. He, himself, does not stay with the group, but he has convinced them they should forget about California and head north to Oregon. The trail is brutal and back-breaking and snow comes early.
The party eventually separates into three separate camps in close proximity to one another and attempt to hunker down until the weather improves. But, it doesn’t. Several men go on alone in search of a waystop where help can be found. Eventually many rescue parties travel back to the camps and take out as many people who can walk (mostly children at times) as they can. This is done over and over, all the while, the circumstances of the survivors growing more dire as they wait. Interestingly, the women, in general, fared better than the men. Being smaller framed, they didn’t require the same calorie intake.
Brown’s writing is compelling and beautiful. Sarah and two sisters are all that is left of her large family. When all survivors are delivered to safety, he tells us what became of all of them, detailing their lives, subsequent families, etc. There are also many photographs of Sarah’s family and others who accompanied them.
This is a page turner and I highly recommend.
Infinity –
Ich konnte dieses Buch fast nicht mehr weg legen. Es liest sich (mit den entsprechenden Englischkenntnissen) extrem flüssig, bleibt aber trotzdem so nah wie möglich an den historischen Fakten und schafft es auch noch die blutigsten Details zu schildern, ohne reißerisch zu werden. Ich würde es jedem empfehlen, der sich für die düsteren Abgründe der Geschichte interessiert und einen relativ starken Magen hat.
Tripower53 –
4 stars
This book is both and exhaustive study and a telling tale of brutal life in the 1840’s.Sarah Graves and her family have joined a wagon train to California from their home in Illinois. The story is focused on Sarah, but tells of the experiences of the others in the party as well; at least as much as we can know about their thoughts and feelings from our point of view. It describes the initial exaltation turning to misery and pain as time and miles go by. The book talks about the fauna and flora the travelers experienced on the journey. It discusses the weather and its changes, the changes in the very ground on which the walkers were traversing.
The book also discusses the less than honest among not only the travelers, but those who are out to get what they can. Like those who are misleading the journeyers on purpose to gain their own ends and those who feel that their own needs come before anyone else’s. As the trek went on mile after mile, the tempers flared ans fights broke out. The book offers explanations for how this happened and the subsequent consequences of certain individual’s actions.
This is a well written account of the ill-fated “Donner Party” and especially one Sarah Graves, although she married a man called Jay Fosdick before she left home for her adventure in the wilderness. Although some of it is conjecture, I appreciated Mr. Brown’s effort and what must have been exhaustive research that went into his story. I like the way Mr. Brown interjects some historical facts into the story, such as the history of the undertaker business and the history of the celebration of Christmas in America. The first time he did this, it was a jarring distraction, but it grew on me as I read along. I have read many accounts of the Donner Party and this one is among the best.
I immediately went back to Amazon to look for others of Mr. Brown’s works.
Kristen –
This is an extremely well written and well done account of the Donner Party disaster. It was a great read. The only issue I had was the authors decision to tell the story from the perspective of a member of the party, Sarah Graves. He makes a lot of that decision throughout the book but I dont feel like it added a lot, and as he didnt have a lot of information about Sarah, i found a lot of that part of it was conjecture on the authors part. But that’s a small complaint and the exhaustiveness of the research that went into the book means you’ll learn a lot about the era as well as how people respond to traumatic events. Very very good book!
Kathy C –
This book was so beautifully written. I loved how much of the emotion and struggle of those travellers was captured by Brown. A harrowing and insightful book that showed so much respect to its subjects, I cannot fault it. The information was thorough and well presented, you can see how much research went into it. If you are interested in history and want a fantasticlly portrayed story this is for you.