Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West
by Ethan Rarick
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ethan RarickEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-07-08
ISBN: 0195383311
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West
Book Review: Grim, Yet Empathetic
Summary: 5 Stars
In my middle school days in Oregon, I first heard tales of the Donner Party and the lengths they went to survive--some of them resorting to the eating of human flesh. My great-grandparents owned a cabin only seventy miles from the fateful pass, and that again brought the story to light in my young mind. The idea was gruesome, yet strangely intriguing. How far will one go to survive? What are the moral boundaries in such situations? Does guilt play a long-term role in the lives of the survivors?
Ethan Rarick does a wonderful job of setting the stage for this nineteenth century story. He introduces us to the realities of westward expansion in 1849, giving clear views of the timeframes, weather, terrain, and threat (and lack thereof) from local Indians. Without overwhelming us, he gives us insights into the motivations of the Donner Party, and the ill-advised decisions that led to their ultimate downfall. His narrative is empathetic and humane, relying on numerous journals and other archives. As in "The Perfect Storm," we find out many relevant facts regarding nature and its adverse affects on humans who proceed without caution. As in "In the Heart of the Sea," we get a grim and matter-of-fact account of human consumption. While Rarick does not hold back from the harsh realities, he never wallows gratuitously in the horrors.
I picked up this book as part of a research project, yet found myself engrossed on a more personal level, discovering truths about those pioneers who helped shaped the area of the country I grew up in, and truths about human nature's ability to find hope in the midst of darkness.
Summary of Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West
In late October 1846, the last wagon train of that year's westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force. After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter. The conclusion is known: by spring of the next year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human survival. But until now, the full story of what happened--and what it tells us about human nature and about America's westward expansion--remained shrouded in myth.Drawing on fresh archeological evidence, recent research on topics ranging from survival rates to snowfall totals, and heartbreaking letters and diaries made public by descendants a century-and-a-half after the tragedy, Ethan Rarick offers an intimate portrait of the Donner party and their unimaginable ordeal: a mother who must divide her family, a little girl who shines with courage, a devoted wife who refuses to abandon her husband, a man who risks his life merely to keep his word. Rarick resists both the gruesomely sensationalist accounts of the Donner party as well as later attempts to turn the survivors into archetypal pioneer heroes. "The Donner Party," Rarick writes, "is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity."
A fast-paced, heart-wrenching, clear-eyed narrative history, Desperate Passage casts new light on one of America's most horrific encounters between the dream of a better life and the harsh realities such dreams so often must confront.
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