The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride… by Daniel James Brown

Well, I could not possibly have been more excited to receive this book! Having lived within just a few miles of the cabins I developed an intense interest in the history of the Donner-Reed Party when I was younger. I drove past it every day but never really thought about it until one day, out of desperation for something to read while waiting for my laundry to finish, I picked up a copy of [Ordeal By Hunger] at the local grocery store. That was 20 years ago now and I am still just as fascinated.

Over the years there has been a variety of myths and legends surrounding what happened, some started by the survivors themselves and some originated or perpetuated by writers like Stewart and McGlashan, I hoped that Brown would take a more modern approach to his research and make an attempt to weed some of those inconsistencies and more dramatic add-ons from the story and he did so in fine style. Because the truth is, inevitably, so much more interesting. While this doesn’t go into research in the depth that I would have liked, being a fan of those dry scientific papers that others seem so loathe to read, it is still far more informative than I expected and full of additional information culled from various perspectives such as PTSD, the effects of starvation, grief, poor diet, interpersonal conflict and hygiene. In addition the author addresses how, by necessity, many of the decisions of emigrants of that time period were based on nothing more than educated guesses. Forced to make decisions without any kind of true cartography, confronted with conflicting opinions, information presented as truth when in reality it was often nothing more than speculation and overly optimistic descriptions, it is amazing that many more emigrants didn’t suffer similar fates. Having made the drive myself many, many times from Reno to Truckee up the same canyon that the Donners were forced to travel by wagon with no roads, it is simply a mystery to me how they did it.

This is without question one of the better books written on this story. That the author accomplished this with such compassion and attention to detail makes this book a welcome addition to my Donner library. ( )