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. 

What can you say about a Donner Party narrative? The event itself is both harrowing and captivating, and you're probably not here unless you're already interested in reading about it. So instead I'll talk about the writing style. I appreciated a lot of the author's choices, especially his dedication to weaving together all the threads in chronological order - this goes for all the people involved, but also contextual events such as the formation of storms and the war with Mexico to seize California. The sensory details are also phenomenal. At times I pulled up Google Maps and street view'd my way around the Salt Lake area and Emigrant Gap, so I could join the author in picturing these landscapes (I didn't participate in the odor-based descriptions). I liked the little scientific asides explaining what happens to a human body during core temperature fluctuations, or how many calories Sarah might have needed to burn; I found the context really interesting, and as I thought about the physiological processes involved in starvation or hypothermia or whatever he was describing, that was when the visceral horror of the experience started to creep up on me. I grew up in Lake Tahoe hearing about the Donner party since I was quite young, and this was the first time I've had a physical horror reaction about it, so well done, author. Last but not least, I loved the sweet little moments where she and Jay got to hang out quietly together, where her mother brought Jay's violin over the pass, where we got to see hope and love in the midst of disaster. Lots of these kinds of narratives relish the gory details and leave out what motivates survivors to keep going, and it was nice not to end on a totally bleak note.