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 …
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.
Review of 'The Indifferent Stars Above' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I’ve read a lot about the Donner Party and appreciate that this book includes a lot about the history of our state, including what the actual journey was like to get here at that time, what was happening in Alta California, and other additional context and information. A well-researched account that really helped me feel what it must have been like for the emigrants. Recommended if you like books about California history or the Donner Party specifically.
Review of 'The Indifferent Stars Above' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Harrowing, indeed. I'd heard little of this tragedy before, and what I read in these pages shocked me.
The author chose to focus on a young woman, Sarah Graves, just as she has come of age and married. When her parents decide to sell everything and migrate west, Sarah is relieved that instead of losing them, she and her new husband join them. It's not surprising that the journey is arduous, but the tragic twist comes about because of a bad actor named Lansford Warren Hastings, the author of a well-known book at that time called The Emigrants' Guide, in which he lobbied heavily for heading into California instead of Oregon, and planned to know the best route. (Known as the Hastings Cutoff). The man had no knowledge of the land, and was simply a charlatan, out to make money. The Donner party was unfortunately swayed by this con, a …
Harrowing, indeed. I'd heard little of this tragedy before, and what I read in these pages shocked me.
The author chose to focus on a young woman, Sarah Graves, just as she has come of age and married. When her parents decide to sell everything and migrate west, Sarah is relieved that instead of losing them, she and her new husband join them. It's not surprising that the journey is arduous, but the tragic twist comes about because of a bad actor named Lansford Warren Hastings, the author of a well-known book at that time called The Emigrants' Guide, in which he lobbied heavily for heading into California instead of Oregon, and planned to know the best route. (Known as the Hastings Cutoff). The man had no knowledge of the land, and was simply a charlatan, out to make money. The Donner party was unfortunately swayed by this con, a choice that became fatal. The other factor in this disaster was the fact that they started out too late in the season, and so got caught in the mountains during severe weather.
One piece of history that I found fascinating was the fact that since at this time California was sovereign Mexican territory, those who migrated there from the United States were in fact the first illegal immigrants. The Mexican government at that time did require immigration documents and require residents to become naturalized citizens of Mexico. Most newcomers ignored the law, and thus were there illegally.
What unfolds here is not easy to read. In fact, it is dark and deeply depressing. It is hard to believe anyone's body and mind can survive so much. I wasn't shocked to read that they eventually ate their dead, but was very shocked that one of their party committed murder for that purpose; one of them came across two Native Americans (Luis and Salvador) who had been with their party earlier, and shot them with no seemingly no remorse.
I won't recount this story in detail--it's here for whoever wants more detail. Forty-six people survived out of 87.
Though she survived these traumas, Sarah's life does not end happily ever after. She's lost her husband and her parents, and is left with younger siblings to care for. Life was hard.
