Mostly interesting, but there were moments where it felt like the author went on a tangent that wasn’t really necessary.

Especially the random stuff about like, birth control in the 1840s?

I also felt like we got statistics at various points without giving us good explanations of said statistics. 

A fantastic historical non-fiction read. The research that went into this book and the way that the information is presented is fabulous. This is a historical non-fiction book that caused me to go into a reading slump -- not because this book was bad, but because I had a hard time finding other books that were as well written. 

This was an absolutely fascinating read about a horrible historical event. I realized I knew almost nothing about the Donner Party, and this book really walked the line between informative and narrative description. We follow Sarah Graves, a young, recently married woman following her family west on a doomed trek.

One of my coworkers is actually distantly related to the Donner party--evidently one of her grandfathers was invited on the trip and (maybe wisely) decided not to go--and the information she's told me about the terrain in that part of California and the artifacts that still remain got me intrigued enough to check out this book. I loved Boys in the Boat by the same author, so I thought I would thoroughly enjoy this one as well.

And I did. But holy crap, is this book not for the faint of heart. It tells you more details about how starvation works than you'll ever want to know. It goes into excruciating detail about the challenges the early settlers faced, even before any of the calamities that happen to the Donner Party actually start happening, to the point where you start wondering why any sane person would want to load everything they own into a wagon and set off into untamed and stupidly rugged territory. These people have to have more mental fortitude than me. After the first canyon where they essentially had to bushwhack their way along the entire route, I would have gone "whelp, I don't think this route is all it's cracked up to be, I'm actually quite comfortable being where I am now, sayonara" and turned my ass quite thoroughly around. To know that they kept persevering, kept going even when every single odd seemed stacked against them, was both inspiring and a little sobering.

It followed the trend I've seen in a lot of disaster books, too--the idea that if just one of a multitude of factors was changed, maybe it wouldn't have turned out quite so badly for everyone involved. Maybe if they'd never taken the shortcut that was proposed in the first place, it wouldn't have turned out the way it did. All we can do is guess.

Overall, this was a beautifully descriptive and haunting book that made me appreciate the little luxuries we take for granted in our modern world (and made me want to visit that part of California sometime soon, but only in the dead of summer when the weather is halfway decent). Highly recommended.

This is one of the most gut wrenching and horrific stories I’ve read. I found myself moved to tears many times placing myself as a young woman in the shoes of Sarah and her companions. The author wrote beautifully of the scenery in which the party found themselves, I could clearly see places I’ve never been (though I had to reference google maps a handful of times). This story is not without bias from the author, but no narrative non-fiction truly can be. This book has left me with a lasting impression of a story which I knew little about before.