The Indifferent Stars Above
The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride
By Daniel James Brown
(Harper Perennial, Paperback, 9780061348112, 384pp.)
Publication Date: June 2010
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Hardcover, Paperback
Categories: Historical - U.S., United States - 19th Century/Old West, Women
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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the June 2009 Indie NotablesIn 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 emigrants 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, Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most infamous 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.
Daniel James Brown is the author of the widely acclaimed Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894. He lives in the country east of Redmond, Washington, with his wife and two daughters.
“A compelling retelling of the ghastly events surrounding the Donner party. Daniel James Brown, using one survivor’s experience as his focus, moves beyond the cardboard figures depicted in previous accounts and shows how the lucky few endured and survived.”
-Irvin Molotsky, author of The Flag, The Poet and the Song: The Story of the Star-Spangled Banner
“A skillful, suspenseful study of the Donner Party, narrated from the point of view of a newly married woman…Wading through the many previous accounts of the ill-fated journey, Brown creates a thorough and unique narrative. A moving man-against-nature tragedy that stillresonates today.”
-Kirkus Reviews
“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.”
-Nina Burleigh
“Daniel James Brown brings the myth to life, transforming faint history class memories into gripping reality.”
-BookPage
“Brown draws from the many previously published accounts of the tragedy, letters from the party and those who knew them, accounts of life on the Oregon and California trails, genealogical databases, and his own travel along the trail…but he tells the tale with a novelist’s touch.”
-Boston Globe
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