Reviews

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

readingwmiles's review against another edition

2.0

i really wanted to like this but i was just underwhelmed. the writing of this just didn’t engage me, although there were some good moments. i started reading on my kindle but i wasn’t connecting with the writing, switching to the audiobook didn’t help much. i understand there were many people involved in the donner party but i often felt lost in a sea of names reading this. because i wasn’t engaged i didn’t absorb much from this :/

shmis's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

ailynobaire's review against another edition

A story that stood out to me in the many stories I’ve read of the American frontier. The novel tests your empathy and your ability to humanize in a time and place largely foreign to a modern reader. We may understand what happened to these people but we will never really get it. What they went through proves the courage and tenacity of the human spirit, even once it’s been taken apart and tested again and again, beyond reason. The epilogue from the writer’s perspective felt awkward and unnecessary, but he was coming from a good place. A good read overall. An incredible amount of research must of been done to write this. 

torriebug's review against another edition

5.0

"Under the blankets, Lemuel Murphy finally quieted down. His sister, sobbing, held his head in her lap until, at about 2:00 A.M., he ceased breathing. Then they rolled his body out into the moonlit snow and closed the circle tighter, down to ten now. The next day they set about the task of butchering meat."

Haunting from start to finish. Brown did such an incredible job of depicting the tragedy of the Donner Party, relying on his own experiences backtracking their trail. Even though this is a nonfiction, it kept me captivated the entire time without sensationalizing it. If you read any nonfiction this year, let it be this!

fedak's review against another edition

3.0

Well researched, but tended to meander into minutia or asides far too often

It is also in desperate need of an annotated map- I'm a Tahoe local and still found myself stopping frequently to Google many of the locations in the narrative

ryner's review

adventurous dark informative medium-paced

4.0

The tragedy of the Donner Party of 1846 has been told numerous times in varying degrees of research and detail. In this 2010 version, Brown opts to narrate this disaster and survival story from the perspective of Sarah Graves, a new bride traveling west with her family and her new husband. They make the catastrophic choice to join up with another trail party whose fate would still be remembered with a shudder more than 150 years later.

Brown has presented a thoroughly researched, balanced and well-written portrayal of the circumstances, personalities, decisions and aftermath. It's funny — this is the fourth Donner Party narrative I've read now, and in each instance there has been a fanciful part of my brain that feels hopeful that *this time* they will make different choices that lead to a less tragic outcome. Alas, that never happens. I do feel rather an expert now on the subject, though.

thor's review against another edition

dark

3.75

mirandarocks's review against another edition

5.0

Holy fuck this book was amazing. Such a horrific and harrowing story, made even worse because it actually happened. But the storytelling was incredible and despite the terrible subject matter, the story itself was beautifully written. Highly recommend.

natnatcat82's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Haunting, terrifying

vickijank's review against another edition

Hard to follow