What would you to in order to survive? Faced with certain death, would you do the unthinkable to save yourself? To save your children? Could you commit the ultimate social taboo if it meant living to see another day? That's what the members of the Donner Party faced those cold winter months all those years ago. And, though you probably know the choice most of them made, I don't think you can understand the decisions they made until you read this book.
I heard about this book when the author was on NPR. The story of the Donner Party itself is fascinating, but the author read passages that showed this was more than a ghoulish account of cannibalism. (The author also happens to be the voice of Sheriff in the Cars movies, so listening to him read from his own book - especially the passages he read from this one - was a little surreal.)
Most of us know the Donner Party because of the choices they made that winter; stranded in snow in the Sierra Nevadas, they ran out of options. Many - not all of them - ate the flesh of the dead to survive. What most of us don't know is the excruciating journey they took just to get to that point on the promising trail west. This book starts at the beginning.
The author details how the Donner Party came together; it wasn't just one family, it was many. The makeup of the party changed many times throughout their journey from Illinois to their intended destination in California. It was made up of several families, single men, young and old. They all wanted to fulfill that promise of Manifest Destiny. They knew what was ahead of them on the uncertain, unpredictable trail. But, they believed they were supposed to go west and claim land as their own. They made one tragic mistake: they took a shortcut.
Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, the Donner Party chose to take a less-traveled path over the Sierra Nevadas called the Hastings Cutoff. They didn't know how treacherous it would be - and, they didn't know they were trying to cross the mountains way too late in the season. Just as they arrived and started to climb, winter arrived with a vengeance.
Every page of this book feels like it's building to that ultimate decision: would they eat the flesh of their dead traveling companions in order to survive. What this book does, though, is helps those of us who can't even imagine making that decision understand how they did. It chronicles hardships and death along the trail and, especially, families doing what they can to stay together and stay optimistic. Many had very young children with them. The mothers had to remain strong and resilient and also care for those who depended on them for everything.
When winter bears down and the party has no choice but to set up camp for the winter, you almost feel yourself suck in a breath and hold. You know they're about to do the unspeakable. The author describes that it wasn't as if someone said, "Hey, we should eat the dead people" and everyone else went along without thinking. For many, it was a decision they would never speak about, even decades later. For some, it was a simple choice: eat of the flesh and live. Some never could partake - and, some of those people died for that choice.
Despite it being central to the Donner Party story, this isn't a book about cannibalism. It's a small party of a much larger story about the settling of the American west. The things they endured go beyond anything most of us could ever imagine. It's a book about human tragedy, to be sure, but also about the perseverance of so many who left their lives behind in search of something more.
You read it and you can't imagine the strength it must have taken to literally walk across the unsettled west. The animals they encountered, the Indian tribes they feared, the accidents that prompted them to bury their loved ones knowing they'd never return to the spot again. You can't imagine the mothers, watching their children starve to death in their arms. You can't imagine the faith it must have taken to be heading blindly into a future you've never seen.
This book is powerfully written and thoroughly researched. It's educational, but emotional. And, it's graphic. Raw. It's not dinner conversation, to be sure. But, it's absolutely worth your time if you want to know the true story about these pioneers and their fight to survive.
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