The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown

When I found out I was going to be driving to Michigan and back, I started doing research into riveting audiobooks on reddit. One of the recommendations was The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown and it was available to borrow from the library right away, so I immediately downloaded it. Brown is the author of The Boys in the Boat, which is another relatively popular nonfiction book - I haven't read that one, but if you're wondering where you've heard that name, that's probably where. 

As I started writing this review, it got long and out of control. TL;DR: I liked this book. I would probably eat my dog. 

In April of 1846, Sarah Graves set out with her brand new husband, her parents, and her eight siblings from their home in Illinois to head west to California in a covered wagon pulled by oxen. They eventually start traveling with a larger group and by December, the brutal winter snows in the Sierra Nevada Mountains have trapped them less than one hundred miles from their destination. This book puts the focus on Sarah as a character we follow from the beginning of the journey to the end. It's an interesting choice of a character because unlike many others in the Donner party, Sarah did not leave a journal, she did not talk about her experience to the media afterwards, and the mentions of her in other people's narratives are brief. All of that said, centering the story around a woman was smart and made the story less about ADVENTURE and FREEDOM and more about LIMITED CHOICES for women and CHORES. (Although Sarah did not have any children while she was on this journey, so that made her an unusual woman in that way.) 

There's a lot here. The travelers in this group had left Independence, Missouri weeks later than was recommended. They attempted an unproven shortcut suggested by a charlatan. They made bad choice after bad choice and then once they got to a path in which they had to take the high (hard) road or the low (easy) road, it is easy to see why they chose the low road, even as it was a no good, very bad idea.

Here are questions I thought a lot about as I was reading this story:

1) What kind of person does it take to decide to travel across the country in a covered wagon? Seriously. Is it bravery? Stupidity? Desperation? The Graves family was doing just fine in Illinois - they had a prosperous farm and were popular with their neighbors. What could possibly convince them that they needed to do this? 

2) Even if Sarah had not wanted to go, she had no choice once her husband and father decided that they would. Do we still see this lack of autonomy for women today? What were Sarah's options if she'd wanted to stay in Illinois?

3) Can you imagine what it smelled like? Forget being forced to stay in makeshift cabins while the snow is taller than a human and the smell of food, sweat, feces, and fear, but even just being in the wagon in the open prairie? These people were not bathing regularly, they were driving oxen and herding cows, there were family dogs, and can you even imagine how dirty everyone was? Don't get met started on the body lice and disease. 

4) What would you be prepared to do to survive? Would you eat your family dog? Your oxen that you need to pull you to safety? Another human if they died of natural causes/starvation? Would you decide that murdering someone to increase resources for you and your family is a moral decision? Look, it's easy for me to say that I'd never eat my dog, but if I hadn't had food in twelve days and my body started digesting its own proteins and my general irritableness/mental illness intensified, I mean, who knows what I would do? (NOTE: I have no plans to eat Hannah.)

5) Were the survivors of this ordeal heroes or just people doing what they had to do to make it out of the mountains? I have complicated feelings about people who are adventuring and things go badly. Like, we have to send out the Coast Guard to get you because you took your yacht out in hurricane conditions? It's why I found Cheryl Strayed frustrating in Wild and why I felt like screaming at Christopher McCandless for being an idiot in Into the Wild. But the Donner party was not out living off the grid on a lark and it's hard to put modern motivations and descriptors on them. 

A few other things I want to mention about this book. Brown is amazing and writing succinct, coherent explanations of complicated topics. His précis on the Blackhawk War was perfection, his description of what happens to your body at the cellular and mental level as starvation sets in was the most riveting science writing I've read in a long time, and the way he clearly states what he knows from primary sources, what he's inferring from primary sources, and what he has gathered from personal research like walking the trail on his own makes this social scientist proud. 

Brown does have a writing tic I found distracting in that he'll be telling part of a story and then say something ominous like "but there were forces a thousand miles away that were working against the Graves family." He did this SO MANY TIMES in the book. I did not care for this. I also did not particularly enjoy the audiobook narrator's voice, but your mileage may vary on that.

Bottom line. I liked this book. It made me think and be grateful for all I have in 2024. 4.5/5 stars

Line of note:

It is difficult for us, with our 21st century view of the earth, replete with satellite imagery, the internet, 24-hour news broadcasts, GPS systems, and high resolution topographical maps, to comprehend just how potentially terrifying it was for the snowshoe party to come to any fork in what they imagined to be their route to salvation. They knew all too well that a wrong turn, any wrong turn, could mean the difference between living and dying. (timestamp 6:22:03)

Look, this is NOT difficult for me to imagine. I have been lost in the incredibly small town where I live before. I have no sense of direction at all. *sigh* How did I ever get around pre-GPS?  

Hat mentions (why hats?):

He seldom wore shoes and never wore a hat. (timestamp 30:42)

They pulled on woolen socks and battered boots. Franklin and Jay dressed in woolen trousers, woolen shirts, and woolen hats. (timestamp 5:30:25)