altlovesbooks
Read alikes:
Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic by Jennifer Niven for another female perspective stranded someplace cold
Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition by Buddy Levy for a ship instead of a wagon train, with a side dish of implied cannibalism
I enjoyed this book, but I thought there was an awful lot of extraneous information thrown in to pad out the page count than I was expecting. Not that any of the info was bad or anything, but there's an awful lot of tangents thrown in that kind of took me out of what we were there for.
We get the whole backstory and leadup to the Donner Party's inevitable stranding, from wagon train forming to life on the trail, and everything in between. We're treated at regular intervals to side tangents about how life was on the trail, what the various Donner Party guests (hehehe) might have experienced, with a ton of historical factoids thrown in as well. It's all clearly researched, it just felt a little slapdash in the beginning.
But then the party gets stranded, the snow starts falling, and things get really grim, really fast. We read this with the benefit of GPS in our pockets, so it's easy to forget how a whole company of people could be taken in by one man's (charlatan's) claims of an easy pass through the mountain. It's incredible to me that people not only survived their ordeal, but came out the other side not entirely crazy from what they went through.
A really compelling read once the party actually starts, but a bit of a slog to get there.
Read alikes:
Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic by Jennifer Niven for another female perspective stranded someplace cold
Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition by Buddy Levy for a ship instead of a wagon train, with a side dish of implied cannibalism
I enjoyed this book, but I thought there was an awful lot of extraneous information thrown in to pad out the page count than I was expecting. Not that any of the info was bad or anything, but there's an awful lot of tangents thrown in that kind of took me out of what we were there for.
We get the whole backstory and leadup to the Donner Party's inevitable stranding, from wagon train forming to life on the trail, and everything in between. We're treated at regular intervals to side tangents about how life was on the trail, what the various Donner Party guests (hehehe) might have experienced, with a ton of historical factoids thrown in as well. It's all clearly researched, it just felt a little slapdash in the beginning.
But then the party gets stranded, the snow starts falling, and things get really grim, really fast. We read this with the benefit of GPS in our pockets, so it's easy to forget how a whole company of people could be taken in by one man's (charlatan's) claims of an easy pass through the mountain. It's incredible to me that people not only survived their ordeal, but came out the other side not entirely crazy from what they went through.
A really compelling read once the party actually starts, but a bit of a slog to get there.