The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown tells the story of the Donner Party and their horrible ordeal attempting to take a “published shortcut” enroute to California. I’ll be honest, I was hesitant to listen to this audiobook. You likely have heard of the Donner Party who became trapped by snow in the High Sierra Mountains and resorted to cannibalism.
I didn’t know much about the Donner Party, and wasn’t sure I wanted to learn more. Years ago I was introduced to Daniel James Brown when I read The Boys in the Boat, about the University of Washington’s eight man crew team and their rise to the 1936 Olympics. After that, I read Under a Flaming Sky, about the Great Hinkley Firestorm when two forest fires converged on the town of Hinkley, Minnesota in 1894 with 200′ walls of flames and temperatures of 1,600° Fahrenheit trapping over 2,000 people.
Brown is such a talented writer, drawing you into the history, that I decided to give The Indifferent Stars Above a chance. I’m glad I did. As with his other books, it is extremely well researched and pulls you into the story, making it difficult to put down.
I was in awe at the amount of suffering they endured. It follows their journey and the fateful events that led to becoming stranded in the High Sierras. The book follows Sarah Graves, a member of the party who also left the camp as part of the Snowshoe Party to seek help and endured unbelievable suffering trying to reach Johnson’s Ranch.
While I knew little about the Donner Party, I knew nothing of the “Snowshoe Party.” Trapped there in the mountains, they made snowshoes out of ox bows and hide, and then set out on a life or death mission to find help. They knew that they must push through or die trying, as returning to the lake camp only meant watching their loved ones die and eventually their own demise.
I knew nothing of the multiple relief parties that put their lives on the line to go into the mountains to rescue the travelers.
It is a heartbreaking story that at multiple times could have had a much different ending if different choices had been made. In the epilogue, the author talks of retracing the steps of the party during his research for the book. As he stood at emigrant gap, surveying the landscape that the Snowshoe Party would have been looking at, contemplating their next move, he offers this observation which applies not only to the Snowshoe Party but the whole expedition.
“They had been this close to their likely salvation but failed to see it. In many ways that low ridge seemed to me to be a metaphor for the larger tragedy of the Donner Party. And studying it solidified in my mind a theme that seemed to keep coming back to me wherever I went in their footsteps. From the time they had first encountered Wales Bonney carrying a note from Landsford Hastings back on the approaches to the South Pass a ridge of deception had slowly arisen between them and the truth of their situation. Led into the wilderness by a lie, led astray at times by their own dreams and ambitions, dazzled by the glare of sun off salt, and confounded by snowstorms, they had found themselves blundering ever more through terra incognita as they moved west. Here at emigrant gap, even the landscape itself had conspired to deceive them. And when the land they encountered did not conform to their expectations they had continued to move forward as if it did, taking the easier route downhill. In the end, as a group, they had exhibited precisely the opposite kind of behavior from the humility and open eyed awareness that survivors always seemed to demonstrate.”
It is an easy read, from the standpoint of the flow of the book and the enticement to see what happens next, although there is an understanding as to what to expect. However, it is anything but easy to read as you watch the tragedy unfold, from the first steps leaving westward weeks late, to taking an unproven route through the mountains.
Still, I can recommend it as worth your time. I came away with a new respect for all of them and what they endured.
It is available in paperback, hardcover, Kindle, and audio.
