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.

For a historical non-fiction book (I usually find these quite dry and difficult to finish), this is really beautifully and skillfully written despite the horrible subject matter, and compassionate about the people involved and history in general. Way too many people involved to follow easily (not the author's fault) - keep a note of who's who!