I didn't expect to like this book, but it was what my book group was doing when I was first invited to join. I thought it would just be ghastly and gruesome with the tales of cannibalism, but instead it was more about telling a story of the journey from beginning to end. I also expected a novel, but found instead a history with some overlay of imagined dialogue and feelings developed by the author after extensive research and physically traveling over the land the party covered, mostly in the same season they did. Perhaps the non-fiction angle helps explain why the story isn't gratuitous in its examination of the disaster. Whatever the reason, I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about the period and the incident without sensationalism. This book will call an area untouched by man or human habitation but then go on to document an Indigenous town located there. So are indigenous people not human? I've always been interested in the story of the Donner Party and I thought I knew a little something about it. But I actually knew very little. The Indifferent Stars Above traces the footsteps of Sarah Graves, a young bride who left her home in Illinois in the spring of 1846, bound for California. Along the way, she and her new husband became members of the notorious and ill-fated Donner Party and ran into a world of trouble. Sarah’s story is among the least known but most compelling aspects of the Donner Party tragedy. Library Journal calls the book “a fresh and intriguing telling.”

What this author did was take primary sources (journals and maps etc) and create a well-rounded of what was happening to this group of people, especially the Graves family, at every point along the trail. He also broadened his scope and talked about what else was going on in the country and around the world, and he used a little bit of scientific explanation in a few parts. So I was able to get a pretty wide story about what the intentions of this group were vs. what they actually experienced, and why, and how they recovered in the years after (at least for the ones that survived the journey). Interestingly, Yeats would later revisit and republish this poem. The updated version was published as follows, and alternatively, the title “An Epitaph:”

Comments from the archive

I won't lie: some parts of the story were hard to read. There were gruesome, bloody parts. And I spent nearly the entire story knowing how things would end up and feeling completely helpless while I watched it all unfold. The first third of the book moves al

of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown The author asks readers to consider who and why individuals dared to make such a trip. I like that he asks us to analyze underlying motives. In my view, Americans are quite simply not afraid to try something new. It’s in their blood. Could this be an attribute that is inherited? I am tempted to think so! Americans left the Old World for something new and better. I like that the author adds this philosophical twist for us to think about. An ideal pairing of talent and material. . . . Engrossing. . . . A deft and endearing storyteller. Mary Roach

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froze hard last night to day clear & warm Wind S: E: blowing briskly. Martha’s jaw swelled with the toothache: hungry times in camp; plenty hides, but the folks will not eat them. We eat them with a tolerable good appetite. Thanks be to Almighty God. Amen. Mrs. Murphy said here yesterday that [she] thought she would Commence on Milt. & eat him. I don’t [think] that she has done so yet; it is distressing. The Donners, 4 days ago, told the California folks that they [would] commence to eat the dead people if they did not succeed, that day or next, in finding their cattle, [which were] then under ten or twelve feet of snow, & [the Donners] did not know the spot or near it; I suppose they have done so ere this time." heroes are sometimes the most ordinary -seeming people. 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.”