The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party

In April of 1846, Sarah Graves, 21 years old and newly married, set out with her husband, her parents and her eight siblings; their destination was California. Seven months later, after joining a party of emigrants led by George Donner, Sarah and her family arrived at Truckee Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains just as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. The group was trapped.

On December 15, Sarah and 14 other young, healthy people set out for California on foot, hoping to get relief for the others. Over the next 32 days they endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors. In this gripping and richly informative narrative, Daniel James Brown takes students along on every step of Sarah's journey. Brown clarifies rumors about the Donner Party and highlights just how difficult life was for the first Western pioneers.

Daniel James Brown is the author of the critically acclaimed history Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894. He has taught writing at San Jose State University and Stanford University and is the author of two textbooks on writing. Brown grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended the University of California at Berkeley and UCLA. He now lives with his wife and two daughters in the country east of Redmond, Washington.

A hard-to-put-down book about an event in American history that has been sensationalized, mythologized, and maligned. What Brown has done is made it understood." -- Seattle Times

--Mary Roach, New York Times Book Review