THE INDIFFERENT STARS ABOVE

by Daniel James Brown

No cover — Daniel James Brown: THE INDIFFERENT STARS ABOVE (Hardcover, 2009, Harper Collins)

Hardcover

Published May 30, 2009 by Harper Collins.

ISBN:: 978-1-61523-037-2

(14 reviews)

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.

7 editions

Pretense reviewed The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown

Review of 'The Indifferent Stars Above' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

“It reminds us that as ordinary as we might be, we can, if we choose, take the harder road, walk forth bravely under the indifferent stars. We can hazard the ravages of chance. We can choose to endure what seems unendurable, and thereby open up the possibility of prevailing. We can awaken to the world as it is, and, seeing it with eyes wide open, we can nevertheless embrace hope rather than despair.”

This one got lost in my TBR for quite a while, but I’m so glad I finally got a chance to tackle it! I had an obsessive phase several years ago on reading about the Donner Party, mostly through the Wikipedia article, and watching the American Experience documentary on them. It is such a tragic but also a timelessly captivating story of human perseverance and grit. Brown does an incredible job creating an engaging narrative; as any good writer does, he admits upfront that his account is not going to be all-encompassing. Rather, he takes as his focal point the life of Sarah Graves, one of the pioneers who joins the Donner Party not at their original starting point, but further along on the journey. Brown literally recreates her steps by walking (and driving) her path. His dedication (and uncanny connection to the events in question) is remarkable. The overarching narrative was familiar to me, but Brown clearly did his research; he peppers the telling with small details, like what kind of flora and fauna the pioneers would see, or describing the gentle flow of a river they stop to bathe in. Of course, the narrative is guesswork; yet, given Brown’s extensive research, they are definitely educated guesses. His ability to write about the events and craft a compelling narrative as good as any fictional text is well exemplified here. Moreover, I appreciated his tendency to describe different types of accounts, even when they happened to conflict or contradict. Rather than taking a definitive side, he takes care to let the reader come to their own conclusions at times.If the book has any downfall, it is that the ending comes rather abruptly. We get a nice ‘epilogue’ of sorts of the futures of the surviving members of the Donner Party, but it comes off as very disparate and untethered from the reality of the gruesome events we have just witnessed. Thus, the pacing for the last part of the book waned for me; the first few parts were exciting and gripping, especially with the unsaid expectations of what is about to happen, and yet the ending can’t compete with that level of intensity. I would certainly recommend this book if you are curious about the actual events of the Donner Party and want to get a rich yet varied perspective—Brown’s book has also led me to other primary and secondary sources on the topic which have provided ample further reading.

GG reviewed The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown

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.

Sharyl reviewed The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown

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 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.