The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride

[Sequoia]

by Daniel James Brown.

Very good read, but NO map! Once you think you've read all there is about the Donner Party, along comes another book.

Here's a review from a reader at Amazon

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificient!, May 9, 2009
By B. McEwan "yellokat"

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
This history of the (in)famous Donner party alternately reads like a thriller, a horror story, a nature study and pure poetry. Author Daniel James Brown really did his homework, actually tracing the route taken by a young woman named Sarah Graves Fosdick as she trekked across the American West with her new husband, seeking a homestead in California.

Taken in by an opportunist named Lansford Hastings, who wanted to make a name for himself (not to mention some quick cash) by routing Westward-heading emigrants through what he called his "shortcut," the several families of the Donner party made a fateful decision to heed Hastings' advice and follow his unproven route through the Sierra Nevada mountains. This was, as history shows, their undoing, as they became stranded throughout the winter in 20+ feet of snow, with no food and minimal shelter.

<snip>

[damntexdem]

1. The movie could be called: Donner of the Dead.

[Sequoia]

2. What a downer!

At one point in the story when the snowshoe people (they had hiked out of the Truckee lake camp to look for help) where were discussing eating the flesh off the bodies of some who'd died already the Miwok guides slipped out during the night only to be caught up to a day or so later. One of the guys went up to them at the creek and said he was going to kill them and shot them. About the next day the first relief party came in with food and saw all the skinned dead lying around. Before that one poor woman had to endure the others eating her husband. There were very many children, some just babies in the ordeal. Many of them made it out.