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

The Indifferent Stars Above is a thrilling and terrifying description of a story that most people know the outlines of, at least as a grisly punchline. In late 1846, a group of emigrants to California got snowed in in the high passes of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Only 48 of the 87 people who crossed the Wasatch mountains survived, and those that lived violated the ultimate taboo of cannibalism.

Brown centers his narrative around Sarah Graves Fosdick, then 21 years old and newly married. She was part of a rugged pioneer family, originally from New England but long chasing the Western frontier. Brown is a master of narrative non-fiction, and builds the tension carefully, explaining the context and culture of these early wagon trains, which set out from the edge of the United States into a great unknown. The going was always hard, long days of walking across sun-bleached prairies afraid of Indian attacks. The group set out late in the year, three weeks past the recommended May 1 start date.

The true disaster was following a “shortcut” recommended by Lansford Hastings, a writer and impresario who had financial incentives to lure people to California, and who recommended a path he had not taken which was impassible. The journey across the Wasatch mountains and Great Salt Flat left the Donner party delayed and weakened, and they suffered actual harm from Indians when Paiutes stole many cattle.

That’s when the horror began. Short on food and trapped by snowstorms, the men, women, and children froze and starve. A few brave people managed to hike out on crude snowshoes, alerting relief parties, but at some point the entire Donner party crossed that moral event horizon and saw each other as food.

The story is truly harrowing. Brown blends what’s known of the events (several competing accounts from survivors) with the modern science of survival and personal accounts of how hard walking even a few miles along the Donner’s routes can be.