People who know about such things seem to agree that it's credible as a work of history. I found it to be well written and evocative. I expect that getting both of those things to be true was a writerly challenge, but Brown did a fine job. There have apparently been a number of other books on the topic, written with varying degrees of journalistic rigor pretty much since the first of the survivors staggered in out of the mountains. Brown did a thorough, meticulous job of sorting out the existing accounts and combining that was both readable and at least plausibly accurate. Also, this book really, really, really could have used 1) a map of the journey, and 2) a dramatis personae, or perhaps some genealogical trees, of the relevant characters. Those visuals would have greatly mitigated my confusion and the time spent Googling things. Interestingly, Yeats would later revisit and republish this poem. The updated version was published as follows, and alternatively, the title “An Epitaph:”

Overall, Donner Party men died at nearly twice the rate of women (56.6 percent of the males, 29.4 percent of the females). They died much sooner, too. Fourteen Donner Party males died before the first female did. And it was men in their prime years who died earliest and in the largest numbers. Of twenty-one men between the ages of twenty and thirty-nine, 66 percent died; of thirty women in the same age group, only 14 percent died.” The idea that physical belongings and characteristics only last a person for so long is an interesting idea; the speaker appears to be lamenting this fact, noting that beneath the boards (again, presumably referring to a coffin), the woman’s beauty will fade, and even if it did not, would never be seen again. It is also interesting that in the dreamscape, the speaker is only able to communicate this idea by carving it on the grave marker of the woman, as though he wants her to know about this message, as well as the rest of the world — or at least, the rest of the foreign world, the one who never knew her at all. In this gripping narrative, Brown reveals the extremes of endurance that underlie the history of this nation, and more than that, of humanity in any part of the world, even today, surviving great peril in search of a better life. Nina Burleigh One event that significantly impacted the work of Yeats was his meeting with Maud Gonne, a young woman who became the subject of Yeats’s desires and infatuations. He came to care for her deeply, and she became the inspiration for many of his poems. Although he proposed marriage to her — at least four times — she never married him, saying that she believed a poet could never be happy unless they had unhappiness in their lives to fuel the poetry that gives them solace. She is even cited to have claimed that the world would thank her for never marrying him.The author himself traveled as best he was able, the route Sarah Graves and company traversed. His personal thoughts at the end of the book on their journey, and later what happened to the survivors made it especially poignant for me. The narrative of westward expansion and the plight of the pioneer is inextricably linked to the American story. The story of how our country came to be the nation it is today cannot be told without including the tales of westward migration, manifest destiny, and the push to expand the United States “from sea to shining sea.” The story of the ill-fated Donner Party is one that has remained at the forefront of westward expansion -- mostly due to the salacious accounts of cannibalism that accompany that tragic tale. This way of writing nonfiction is my absolute favorite: You can tell that the author has so thoroughly researched it, has come to so inhabit the space, that even though there is not, say, an hour-by-hour journal of what occurred, the author is able to make educated guesses that are rich and colorful and informative. This is nonfiction, not historical fiction, and yet... you sit at the campfire with the immigrants. You feel those deadly flakes of snow as they cover them like a pall. Your stomach squirms with the impossible hunger and your mind with the impossible dilemma. The Donner Party’s 1846 - 1847 expedition is said to be the worst disaster of all the overland migrations to California. To call it harrowing is by no means an exaggeration! A detailed rendition of all that happened is told, here, in this book. The facts are made clear. What you want to know is explained clearly. It reads as narrative nonfiction.

I recently read Brown's The Boys in the Boat and on the strength of that book, decided to give this one a try. Part One of The Indifferent Stars Above is short but effective, establishing the key players in the story and providing appropriate context. Part Two’s title however, harkens to the increasing trouble to come: “The Barren Earth.” However, as the Graves, Donner, and Reed families officially link up and begin their journey as a unit, things keep going from bad to worse. By the time we arrive at Part Three, hauntingly titled “The Meager By the Meager Were Devoured,” the full extent of the Donner Party’s nightmare begins to unfold.Out of the 83 people who were trapped in the mountains in the snowstorm, only 45 survived to reach California. The people tried their best, they fought hard and were faced with hard choices. They did not have the luxury of our modern conveniences. They were up again horrible odds and did the best they could.

Interestingly, author Daniel Brown has a connection with the Graves family, if a tenuous one; his great-uncle George Foster met the Graves while on their way west. The Fosters took the correct route and made it safely to California. The Graves took a “shortcut” encouraged by a man named Hastings who bought land in CA and was eager to convince easterners that the route could be faster and easier than getting to Oregon (he was wrong, clearly). The Fosters also helped with the rescue efforts and took Sarah and her siblings in briefly after the disaster. I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys true adventure stories. It is extremely well-researched and all of the information is presented in a narrative that is never dry but always quite compelling. If I had any criticism, it would mainly be the large cast of characters, which eventually sort themselves out. 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.Having read about the Donner Party before, the topic was not new to me. I chose to read this because I have liked the author's other books. I knew he would do a good job! Like, as long as they die of natural causes, what’s the big deal? Honestly, if I were starving to death, I’d sooner eat a human that died naturally than kill an animal. As the young heroine of this book, Sarah Graves, said simply of her young husband’s body when asked by companions if they could eat it, “You cannot hurt him now.” I cannot stress enough that these books are about real life people. The Indifferent Stars Above reads in part like a horror novel. It gets to the point where the horror of their situation is so strong that it pushes the story into unreal territory. The human mind wasn’t made to handle events like this, it feels unreal. That said, it really did happen and the story is fascinating. As the subject of a great many of Yeats’ poems, it is possible that the anonymous woman in this poem is meant to be based on Gonne, who traveled a great deal throughout her lifetime. It is possible that Yeats dreamed of what might happen if she were to pass away in a different country, far from her friends, family, and, of course, from him. This also makes sense in the context of the final two lines, praising the beauty of the woman — as Yeats so often did for Gonne in his poems.